"Come on. Come on. Go. GO. GO. GO. GO. Do not stop, run, run. IF YOU FALL, YOU STAND, AND YOU RUN AGAIN. NOBODY STOPS. GO. GO. GO."
It was aggressive. It was punishing. The kind of session where the coach does not stop shouting, where his voice fills the whole training ground, where the words come down on the players like something physical.
While the Barcelona players were winding down at a company dinner, the Chelsea players, over at Cobham, their own training ground, were doing something very different.
Where Barcelona had ballrooms and soft lighting and suits and drinks and laughter, here there was sweat. Tracksuits. Shouting. Groans. Worry.
For two hours now, Tuchel had the Chelsea men's first team locked into high intensity training. Just straight, unrelenting, high intensity. Weights. Sprints. Press-ups until arms gave out. Two full hours of it, and even now, at the end of it, he had them running the length of the pitch, up and down, up and down. They had lapped it six times already. The players were beaten. Their speed had dropped off a cliff, their legs gone heavy, their lungs burning.
And Tuchel did not stop them.
He told them to keep going.
Normally, at the very top of the sport, a team's training is a far more calculated thing. These men were worth tens of millions of euros each. Some of them, hundreds of millions. They were worth more than some of the most expensive paintings on earth, and they cost a great deal more to maintain. Which means you already know, without being told, that this level of continuous, grinding, high intensity work is not normal.
And everybody could feel it. Even his own staff.
Off to the side, three of his assistants stood watching, and none of them looked happy.
"The players cannot keep going like this," said Zsolt Löw.
"Yeah." Benjamin Weber shook his head. "If this continues, someone's hamstring is going to go. Or a groin. You cannot flog professionals into the ground two days out from a session like this without something tearing."
"Or worse," Zsolt said.
The three of them looked at one another.
Arno Michels let out a long sigh.
"Yeah," he said. "We need to do something."
He felt the other two turn and look at him.
"No. No, no, no."
"Arno." Zsolt spread his hands. "You know it has to be you. He listens to you. You have known him the longest, out of any of us."
"What about you?" Arno turned to Benjamin. "Eh?"
Benjamin raised both hands, the picture of innocence.
"What?"
"Are you not the analyst? And you have known him almost as long as I have. Should you not be the one to go and."
"What does being an analyst have to do with any of this?" Benjamin fired straight back. "In fact, you."
"We are wasting time," Zsolt cut in.
The other two went quiet.
Zsolt tipped his head toward the far side of the pitch.
"Look."
They both followed his eyes. Over near the far touchline, a knot of the other staff members, the ones the manager had inherited, were standing close together, talking low, glancing over. The body language was not good.
"It is not looking good," Zsolt said quietly. "We need to do something, and we need to do it fast."
Arno sighed again. He rubbed his face.
"I will go."
Benjamin smiled and clapped him on the shoulder.
"Thanks, pal."
"Yeah. Yeah." Arno rolled his eyes, and Benjamin just laughed.
Zsolt looked at him, and he was not laughing.
"Just, please," he said. "Stop this madness."
Arno held his eye for a second.
"Yeah."
He started walking toward the front of the pitch, where Tuchel was still standing, still clapping his hands, still driving the players on into another lap. Arno sighed one more time on the way.
Arno, Zsolt, and Benjamin were the only staff who had come in with Tuchel. Zsolt had followed him from PSG. Benjamin had been with him since the Mainz days. And Arno, well, Arno had known Tuchel from before he was ever a professional manager at all.
Because here was the situation. Tuchel had not even been at the club five months. He had come in January, midway through the season, and he had not yet earned the trust of the board. Frankly, he did not even have the authority to fire any of the inherited staff. Not yet. So leaving all of them standing around speculating, muttering about the manager's strange new training methods, was not good for him at all.
And beyond the politics, Arno was genuinely afraid. Afraid one of these players was about to get hurt.
"Come on. Yes. Yes. Go, go, come on. Move. Move. GO. GO."
Tuchel's shouts got louder as Arno got closer.
He reached his side.
"Hey, boss."
Tuchel was clapping, shouting, "Go. Go." He turned his head, saw it was Arno, and immediately snapped his eyes back to the players running.
"Come on. More. More."
Then, still watching the pitch, not looking at him:
"What is up, Arno?"
Arno forced a smile onto his face.
"Well, boss. Ehm." He could feel himself starting to crack. "The thing is. Well. Ehm."
Tuchel, still screaming at the players, turned his head back a little, irritated at being interrupted.
"What is wrong?"
Arno steeled himself.
"Boss, well, it is." He took a breath. "Do you not think it would be good if we gave the guys a bit of a break?"
"Come on. Come on." Tuchel clapped, and then turned back to him, and his face had gone into a displeased frown. "Do not worry. It is needed."
He looked back to the pitch.
"They can handle it."
He said it with his jaw set, staring at the running players with a hard, fixed determination, and there was something underneath it, something agitated, something almost desperate.
Arno looked back over his shoulder. Benjamin and the others were watching him. Giving him the eyes. Waiting.
He turned back. Tuchel had his back to him now, facing the pitch.
Arno steeled himself, harder this time.
"No, they will not."
A beat.
Then, lower, respectfully, at the very end:
"Boss."
Tuchel heard it.
"What are you saying? I know what I."
His voice broke off. He did not finish.
Slowly, he looked back over his shoulder. And he saw the look in Arno's eyes, fierce and steady and not backing down. And then his gaze went further, past Arno, to Zsolt and Benjamin standing to the side watching them. And further still, to the rest of the coaching staff at the far touchline, all of them, every one, staring at the two of them. At him.
He noticed.
Tuchel straightened up, fully, and he turned around, and he looked at Arno.
"This is not just your opinion, is it."
Arno glanced back at the others. Then back at him.
"No, boss."
He tipped his head, signalling with his eyes for the rest to come over.
"Sir. The players can get injured, training like this. It is not safe. We need to."
He got cut off.
Tuchel let out a sigh. A big one. The kind of sigh that comes all the way up from somewhere deep.
And Tuchel looked at Arno, who was more a friend than a subordinate, and then he looked past him again at the rest of them, and Arno really looked at him for the first time. At how worn down he was. The bags under his eyes, dark and heavy. The way he seemed to have dissolved a little at the edges over the last few days, run himself as hard as he was running the players.
"Boss," Arno murmured, seeing it.
Tuchel was quiet for a moment.
Then he said:
"Gather everyone."
He turned away, not even waiting for a reply.
Arno stood there stunned for half a second. Then he turned.
"Yes, boss."
He started waving.
"Everyone. Come. Come over."
He looked to the back, at Zsolt and Benjamin and the rest of the inherited staff, and he waved them over too.
"You guys as well. Come. Come."
They started coming, all of them, the whole scattered coaching apparatus of the club converging on the centre of the pitch. And as for Tuchel, he took the whistle off his chest and walked out toward the players, who were still grinding through their lap, and he lifted it to his mouth and started blowing, one hand out to stop them.
"Wait. Wait."
The players came stumbling to a halt.
"Argh. Finally."
"Thank God."
"I was about to faint."
"My head is spinning."
"I need water."
Most of them collapsed where they stood, folding down onto the grass, some of them going flat onto their backs and just lying there, chests heaving. Only a few, Kanté, Rüdiger, a couple of others, stayed on their feet, and even they were bent double, hands on their knees, dragging air in. That was how hard the session had been.
"Okay. Good."
Tuchel looked to the side and saw that Arno and all the rest of the coaching staff had come forward now. Every single person who could be called part of Chelsea's 2020/21 men's team was within earshot. Which was exactly what Tuchel wanted.
Tuchel raised his voice.
"Okay. I have been getting a few complaints about your training session today."
He said it while looking directly at the coaching staff.
The inherited staff shifted, coughing, looking away, a couple of them clearing their throats and finding somewhere else to put their eyes.
Tuchel rolled his eyes. Then he looked back at the players.
"Even from you lot."
He kept going.
"And complaints about how I have been handling the press. What I have been saying, the things I have said in regards to this match."
Rüdiger, who had been standing with his head bowed, lifted it at that.
"Truth be told," Tuchel said, "they both have the same answer."
Everyone was watching him now.
Tuchel took a breath. And then he started, and there was a crack in him as he did.
"I know you are not allowed to. But does anyone. Does anyone actually look at those things, those odds the betting apps put out when two teams are about to play each other?"
He looked around. Blank, confused faces looked back.
He explained.
"You know. Odds. The probability of who is most likely to win. That kind of thing."
Heads started nodding. Somebody said, "We get you, boss."
"Great. Great, great, great." Tuchel nodded. "Well. The odds for our match against FC Barcelona are out. And, well. Let us just say."
He looked at them.
"It is honestly not pretty."
He paused.
"Barcelona have a. What is it again." He frowned, reaching for the number. "Ah. Yes. They have a 1.88 on them. Which means a. What was it. A 53 percent chance of winning the game inside 90 minutes."
A few of them gasped.
"Yeah." Tuchel nodded slowly. "Yeah. It is maddening, is it not."
He went on.
"To draw was 25 percent. And for us." His voice went heavy. "For us to win, in 90 minutes."
A beat.
"It was 22 percent."
He smiled, a small bitter thing, and shook his head, and muttered, almost to himself:
"Even lower than the chance of a draw."
Everyone stared at him, solemn.
"To actually lift the trophy," he said, "it is even worse. They have a 71 percent chance. We have 29."
He looked around. He looked at the coaching staff staring at him. And more than that, he looked at how the players were staring at him. Deep. Right at him.
Tuchel said:
"It is eleven men against eleven men."
Then he said it again.
"It is eleven men against eleven men. And the gap is that big."
He kept going.
"Why?"
It was rhetorical. He did not stop.
"Why do they have so much better odds than us? Why are they the favourites?"
He paused.
"I mean. Can you even blame them?"
He stopped, and he looked at his players, spread across the grass in front of him.
"I mean. Barcelona. Have you seen them?"
He did a little disbelieving wave of his hand.
"Beating PSG. That insane comeback. And then." He whistled. "That thriller against Bayern. I mean, come on now."
His voice started to climb.
"And Manchester City. Just look at that second leg. Just look at it. That is the team that decimated the league that all of us just played in."
He was shouting now.
"Those are three champions. Ligue 1, Bundesliga, and Premier League champions. All of them, beaten. One of them the defending European champions, while being the champions of England themselves."
His voice rose higher.
"And that is not even all of it. They have got a player putting up over 50 goal contributions in something like twenty-odd matches. Is that even normal? Is that a normal thing?"
Higher still.
"And in the same team. The same team. They have got a man who is arguably the greatest player to ever kick a football."
He laughed at that, shaking his head, laughing, and he was the only one doing it. Everyone else just stared at him.
"I mean, can you blame them? This is what? A fairytale season for them."
He looked around.
"Can you blame the fact that a lot of people think they are most likely to win this match?"
Then, lower:
"I most certainly cannot."
He turned to face the players full on.
"There is a reason those betting apps, and the neutrals, and even me, think what we think. And there is no shame in saying it out loud."
He looked at all of them. One by one. Right in the eye.
And he said it.
"They are better than us."
The reaction moved through them like a current. Some of the players' faces darkened. Frowns. A muscle working in a jaw. Anger, plain anger, at hearing it said. The coaching staff shifted too, displeased, a few of them exchanging looks, and you could read the thought on them, why is he doing this, why is he killing their morale two days out.
Arno felt his stomach drop. He stepped forward, half a word already out of him.
"Boss."
"BUT SO WHAT."
Tuchel shouted it before Arno could get anything else out.
Everyone froze. Everyone stared at him.
And Tuchel said it, with venom on his tongue:
"Who said the better team has to win?"
Silence.
"What does being better even get you, these days?" His eyes went round the whole group, alive now, burning. "If the better team always won, then what would even be the point of football? Eh? Why would any of us bother turning up?"
He let it hang.
"Barcelona being better." He scoffed. "So what of it? What does it actually get them? What does it let them do?"
He shook his head.
"In fact. Let them keep it. Let them have 'better.' The Champions League."
He looked at them.
"No. WE keep that."
His voice was rising again, and this time it was carrying everyone with it.
"And the only way, the only chance we have of doing that, is by putting in more than double the energy of every one of them. You run twice as fast. Twice as hard. And when you cannot run any more, you run anyway, and you run them into the ground."
He smiled.
"Hard work beats talent. Right? Is that not what they say?"
He spread his arms.
"Well. That is all we have."
He looked around at every one of them.
"And that is all we need."
He let it land. And then he looked at his players, sprawled and heaving on the grass, and a smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth.
"So let me ask you this."
He tilted his head.
"Can you keep running?"
The players looked at one another. And then it came up out of them, all at once.
"YES."
"LET'S DO THIS."
"COME ON."
"THAT," Tuchel roared, "IS WHAT I AM SAYING."
He was already turning, already pointing.
"OKAY. LET'S GO. LET'S GO. MORE LAPS. GET UP. GO. GO. GO."
And the players got up.
They peeled themselves off the grass, the ones flat on their backs rolling up onto their feet, the ones bent double straightening, and they went, and they ran, and they ran harder than they had run all session, faster, sharper, more serious, every one of them, the exhaustion still in their legs and something else on top of it now. The fire had been lit. Fully lit.
Off to the side, Arno was smiling. He looked back over his shoulder, and he found Zsolt and Benjamin, and they were smiling too. The speech had not only reached the players.
Tuchel watched them run, and he smiled.
Beating the favourites. Shocking the whole world. Winning when every single person had already decided you were going to lose.
For Tuchel, and for the entire Chelsea Football Club, that could be called their identity. That was, quite literally, the thing they did. Winning against all the odds.
Tuchel smirked, and the thought settled in him, quiet and certain.
Barcelona will not know what hit them.
A/N
If you want to read chapters ahead with uploads and to support me subscribe to my Patreon below There is also a picture of how mateo looks like posted and later there would be votes and all on the site some you wont need to pay to vote but you can if you want to support me thanks
patreon.com/David_Adetola
Thank You your support is greatly appreciated thank you all
I've also created a Discord channel to make communication easier, where I'll post updates
https://discord.gg/ebrzh3Kyr (New discord link)