Tuchel kicks off Bayern reign with tough Klassiker clash against former club Dortmund

Five years ago this week, Thomas Tuchel was giving testimony to a German court. He was a witness in the case against the man accused of planting and detonating bombs targeting the Borussia Dortmund team bus as it carried Tuchel, the club’s then manager, and his players from their hotel to a spring 2017 Champions League match against Monaco. The horrific events that night which mercifully had no fatalities, had, Tuchel testified, affected the team deeply.

They certainly had an impact on the Dortmund performance in the match, which was delayed only 24 hours, a rapid rescheduling that Tuchel and some of his bosses at the club disagreed over. He had argued that the players, one of whom, Marc Batra, was treated in hospital for injuries caused by shattered glass, could not possibly be ready to play so soon.

Monaco won the tie. Tuchel’s time as Dortmund manager ended that summer, after two years in the job. When he returned to the city to give evidence in the trial, the judge asked if Tuchel felt he might have stayed on at the club if the bombing, and the tensions that followed, had not taken place. “I presume I would, yes,” he replied.

As Tuchel prepares to face, as a Bundesliga opponent for the first time, some of the Dortmund players who were on that bus with him, he has reason again to reflect how random events impact even the most carefully planned career of a very meticulous professional, as Tuchel certainly is.

He will be taking charge of Bayern Munich, where he was appointed as new manager a week ago. It’s a resonant debut: a meeting with his former employer with perhaps the destiny of the Bundesliga title at stake.

Until last September, Tuchel was manager of Chelsea, the club he had guided to a Champions League title