The wild hip-hop parties that started Tuchel's journey to England boss

Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Thomas Tuchel is bidding to become the first foreign manager to win the World Cup When Glenn Hoddle's England started their World Cup campaign in France in 1998, Thomas Tuchel was still working a student job at a bar in Stuttgart. Almost 30 years later, Tuchel is now the England manager tasked with doing what Hoddle and so many others failed to do - win the World Cup for the Three Lions. The 52-year-old German is known as one of the game's keenest minds, a coach obsessed with detail and blessed with a special gift for analysis. It is hard to imagine that in the late 1990s, Tuchel was working at the wildest parties in Stuttgart and hanging out with some of Germany's biggest hip-hop stars. Yet it was there, having almost given up on football entirely, that Tuchel began his journey to World Cup management. Last year, respected German coach Ralf Rangnick recalled the story of how he launched Tuchel's career as a coach. "When I found out that he was working in a bar in Stuttgart to earn his living, I could hardly believe it," Rangnick told the BBC, external in an interview with former Germany and Aston Villa midfielder Thomas Hitzlsperger. "I called him and I said, 'what are you doing?' He said 'I have to earn my living there'. I said to him, 'Thomas, please, why don't you come to us in Stuttgart and work as a youth-team coach?' "I brought him together with the academy director and that's how his coaching career started." Figure caption, From bartender to England manager - Rangnick reflects on Tuchel's journey Tuchel had played under Rangnick at SSV Ulm and the two had long admired each other. At Ulm in the early 1990s, Rangnick was laying the groundwork for a tactical revolution in German football as one of the first managers to introduce zonal marking. As Tuchel later told Sky Sports, the coach "changed the way I watched football on television". Rangnick, meanwhile, quickly earmarked the young defender as a possible future coaching talent. "He was always interested in why we play the way we play," Rangnick told the BBC. "After a couple of weeks when you are a head coach you can always pretty precisely tell which players could become a coach." Tuchel's playing career was cut short by injury. Damage to the cartilage in his knees was causing such severe pain that he could barely walk up and down stairs. He had an operation at the age of 23 in a bid to save his career, but eventually realised he would have to retire. The knee issue ended his dream of playing in the Bundesliga, and as he told Die Zeit, external in an interview in 2017, it left him strapped for cash because his insurance had not covered the operation. Having given up his first degree in sport and English to focus on football a few years earlier, Tuchel was now back to square one. "I still had nothing in my bank account. I felt like I was a professional footballer, but I still had to go looking for a job," he told Die Zeit. Tuchel moved to Stuttgart to study business administration and found work in a bar. This was not just any bar, however. Tuchel's new workplace was located in the famous Radio Barth building on Stuttgart's Rotebuhlplatz. Originally a huge music department store which sold records and instruments, the building had been slated for demolition after the store filed for insolvency in 1995. For a few years before it was torn down, however, the venue was rented out to young artists, who briefly transformed it into an iconic nightlife and culture venue. Located on the ground floor of the building, the Radio Bar where Tuchel worked became a hotspot for Germany's burgeoning hip-hop scene. In an interview, external with a student-made documentary in 2008, the bar's former manager Carlos Coelho recalled how popular it became. "We had so many people coming that we had to shut the doors because nobody else could fit in the space," he said. "People just loved it, especially being in this historic Radio Barth building. Everyone who came would say, 'this is where I bought my first record'." Tuchel began collecting empty bottles and glasses, before graduating to table-waiting and eventually serving cocktails at the bar. "I wouldn't want to have drunk the cocktails I was making at the beginning," he told Die Zeit. Yet aside from how to make a mojito and carry a tray of glasses above his head, the England manager said his time at the bar taught him valuable lessons for his future career. "Shift by shift, night by night, I slowly built up my confidence working in the bar," he told Die Zeit. "I overcame my inhibitions about asking strangers if they needed my help, and I realised that people liked me for who I was, that they had no idea that I was an ex-footballer." One of the people Tuchel befriended at the bar was Max Herre, a Stuttgart musician who would go on to be one of Germany's most popular rappers. Speaking to the podcast, external Und was machst du am Wochenende (And w

The wild hip-hop parties that started Tuchel's journey to England boss

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The wild hip-hop parties that started Tuchel's journey to England boss

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