Kai Havertz is no stranger to Thomas Tuchel, with whom he worked at Chelsea FC. Now that Tuchel is at Bayern Munich, Havertz decided to talk about the characteristics of the former Borussia Dortmund manager.
In an interview with Bild on their Phrasenmäher podcast (as captured by Tz), the 23-year-old Bayer Leverkusen product said that Tuchel has a special attention to detail; he will always look to improve even if the games were as perfect as can be. “No matter how good the games were, if you had a bad pass in it, he was never completely satisfied,” Havertz said. Despite helping the 6-foot-2 attacker improve his game and develop a similar mindset for the details, the scorer of the winning goal in the 2021 Champions League Final said that Tuchel can sometimes be too much to handle.
Havertz further detailed that there’s little to no room for error and that everything must be just right under Tuchel’s supervision. “Every pass is played with the right focus and into the right foot. Not too soft, not too hard, but still spicy – just perfect,” says Havertz. “At that moment you think: ‘Woah, I could freak out.’ But then you sleep on it one night and you know: He was right, I did it badly. That’s the only way to improve, when you’re sometimes told the truth to your face.”
When Tuchel himself was dismissed by Chelsea, Havertz found it surprising as well (in the sense that no one at Bayern was prepared to announce the sacking of Julian Nagelsmann). Havertz said he was surprised by the departure, saddened with the farewell, and something he couldn’t understand.