Thomas Tuchel faces old foe Pep Guardiola as Bayern face Man City in Champions League

Thomas Tuchel has urged Bayern Munich to be “smart, brave” and “at their best physically,” for the challenge of facing Manchester City at the Etihad.

The Bayern head coach has barely been in his new job for a fortnight, but if he is still feeling his way around what he called the “tactical solutions” available to him, he has every reason for confidence in second-guessing City’s game plan.

After all, Tuchel has devoted many hours to studying their manager Pep Guardiola and has a history of more than matching him in knockout competitions, the best of which brings them into collision this evening, as City and Bayern contest the first leg of a Champions League quarter-final.

Tuchel versus Guardiola: it has become a classic modern duel, a joust of like-minded innovators with a mutual respect and an intriguing backstory.

Tuchel, at 49 the younger man by three years, used to seek out Guardiola’s company when Guardiola was coaching Bayern, to learn from him.

Not much later they became rivals across in the heavyweight division of German football, when Tuchel took over at Borussia Dortmund.

Those games usually went Guardiola’s way. As fellow coaches in England, when Tuchel was at Chelsea, the tide turned a little. Part of what fascinates in tonight’s 11th head-to-head between the two managers are the echoes of the Champions League final two seasons ago.

Then, as now, Tuchel had been sacked by one club earlier in the season and joined another to correct signs of a slump.

Recently departed from Paris Saint-Germain, he took over Chelsea in early 2021. Within four months, he had strung together three victories over Guardiola’s City, in an FA Cup semi-final, in the Premier League and, most significantly, by 1-0 in Porto to lift the