Tactics Explained | Why Everton Should Hire Thomas Tuchel

Tuchel is renowned as an innovator and someone
who thinks a great deal about opposition strengths and weaknesses before setting up
his team. He has thus used a great many formations, predicated on exploiting the weakness
of the opposition as much as enhancing his own sides’ strengths, including a 4-1-4-1,
a 4-1-3-2, a fairly standard 4-2-3-1, and even a
3-3-2-2. Tuchel is an advocate of two footballing philosophies
that we’ve discussed in previous videos, counter-pressing or gegenpressing
, and positional play. At Mainz, with technically inferior players who were nonetheless fit,
strong, and capable of launching reasonably accurate long passes, the counter-press was
employed relentlessly to good effect. At Dortmund, with more technically capable
players who had pushed the limits of counter- pressing anyway under Jurgen Klopp, Tuchel
was able to encourage a more rotational system of passing, encouraging ball retention rather
than forcing turnovers purely to counter-press. For this, he used the 4-1-4-1 a lot, deploying
the intelligent Julian Weigl behind two more attacking central midfielders – these players
would work the ball until Dortmund could force an overload in a space created out wide and
attack at pace there. His 4-2-3-1 also worked well at Dortmund,
with players like Shinja Kagawa, Henrikh Mkhitaryan, and the deep-dropping Pierre-Emerick
Aubameyang creating overloads in pockets of space between the lines, while
Weigl sat back as a steadying presence in front of
the defence, the full-backs provided the width, and the other central midfielder, usually
Ilkay Gundogan when fit, pushed up as a number eight.
His preference, though, is for a 4-1-4-1 that can become a 2-3-4-1 as the full-backs push
up or cut inside. Central to his style are several
features besides positional play and pressing. He
likes a deep-lying central midfield presence, a creative presence who can none the less
screen and retain possession by rotating the ball through the centre-backs, full-backs,
and central midfielders. It’s noticeable that
Tuchel has often entrusted this role to quite young
players, such as Julian Weigl at Dortmund and Johannes Geis at Mainz.
His two central midfielders, playing ahead of this holder, tend to be quite attacking
and it’s worth noting that Everton’s squad have a
number of players who might suit this eight/ten
hybrid role, such as Gylfi Sigurdsson, Davy Klaasen, and even Wayne Rooney – Tom Davies
could also play there if someone more defensively minded such as Idrissa Gueye, Morgan
Schneiderlin, or Muhamed Besic played further back.
Lastly, it’s worth noting that like Klopp and another recent video subject, Julian Nagelsmann,
Tuchel is excellent at developing and entrusting young players with responsibility on the
pitch. With the likes of Mason Holgate, Dominic Calvert-Lewin, Ademola Lookman, and, of
course, Davies in the squad, Tuchel’s emphasis on youth could have been a real positive for Everton
had they attempted to hire the German manager.
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Tactics Explained | Why Everton Should Hire Thomas Tuchel

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