The further you go in the Champions League knockout stages, the more it resembles a coaching reunion – such is the premium placed on experience and success in this competition, and tonight’s first semi-final between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid is a meeting between two managers who know this terrain better than most: Thomas Tuchel and Carlo Ancelotti.
Real Madrid boss Ancelotti is the modern-day Godfather of the Champions League. One of only seven men to have lifted the trophy as a player and a manager, he is also the most successful coach in the competition’s history, with four victories. To put that into perspective, only one other manager currently in employment has done it more than once – and that is Pep Guardiola, perhaps the greatest coach of his generation.
At 63, Ancelotti is the oldest of the four men who will be in the dugout for the Champions League semi-finals. Yet that is increasingly the nature of the coaches who make it this far; whether it is cause or effect is up for debate, but none of the next wave has won it yet.
Every single manager who has won the Champions League – whether they are currently employed, out of work or retired – is 50 or older. Increasingly, negotiating these high-stakles knockout ties seems to be an older man’s game.
It is no surprise that those who have shown that they can rise to this unique challenge continue to be favoured by some of Europe’s biggest clubs, for whom domestic success is a given, or at least frequent enough to make the Champions League their chief target.
That is certainly the case for three of this year’s semi-finalists: Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Paris Saint-Germain. It is no coincidence that Ancelotti has managed all three, while Tuchel has coached both PSG and now Bayern.
Success begets top jobs, and so the virtuous cycle turns. There are only eight Champions League winning coaches in circulation and the three not currently working – Zinedine Zidane, Jose Mourinho and Hansi Flick – could walk into new clubs tomorrow if they wished.
Tuchel is a member of that elite group, having led a Chelsea side previously floundering under Frank Lampard to the crown in 2021. That came a year after his PSG side made it to the final for the first time in the club’s history, where they lost to Bayern.
Thomas Tuchel won the Champions League with Chelsea and reached the final with PSG
It is that pedigree which made Tuchel an obvious choice when the German giants went searching for a new coach late last season. It has not gone according to plan for the former Borussia Dortmund boss, whose departure at the end of this season was confirmed in February.
Yet despite overseeing the end of Bayern’s 11-year reign as Bundesliga champions, he has continued to steer a path through the Champions League, beating Lazio and then Premier League leaders Arsenal on his way to reaching the last four.
Should he take them all the way, Tuchel will become just the 21st manager to win the competition more than once – and show why it continues to be something of an old boys’ club.