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, 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." This video can not be played 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, 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 that 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 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, Und was machst du am Wochenende (And what do you do on the weekend) in 2024, Herre recalled how Tuchel became part of his "clique" and would often turn up to his concerts. "On one occasion, he even came all the way to a gig in Vienna," said Herre.

Tuchel has extended his contract as England manager through to Euro 2028. When Rangnick called him up to offer him a position, Tuchel was initially reluctant. Yet in 1999, he had a moment when his former club Ulm were promoted to the Bundesliga. Tuchel heard about the promotion during one of his bar shifts and it knocked him sideways.

"I was really annoyed because I thought, 'I always wanted to get to the Bundesliga, and now they are living my dream,'" he told Die Zeit. "I worked another half an hour and then I told my colleagues that I had to leave." Radio Bar's loss was VfB Stuttgart's gain, as Tuchel threw himself into his new life as a youth coach.

He initially took charge of the under-15s, before later becoming assistant to Stuttgart's legendary youth coach Hans-Martin 'Hansi' Kleitsch with the under-19s. Like Rangnick, Kleitsch had been an instrumental figure in the shift to zonal marking, and he was also credited with making Stuttgart into a conveyor belt of world-class youth talent.

Among those who came up the ranks under Kleitsch were Sami Khedira and Mario Gomez. World Cup winner Khedira was also part of the under-19 team crowned German champions in 2005 with Kleitsch as coach and Tuchel his assistant.

In an interview with German website Spox in 2020, Kleitsch said Tuchel made an impression on the young players with his fashion sense. "Thomas used to wear an old military parka that a lot of the players liked," he said. "A few of them also started going to Thomas' hairdresser, but I think in the end it was too expensive for them."

Above all, it was Tuchel's abilities as a coach and in particular his talent for analysis that marked him out. Kleitsch described Tuchel as "the man with the X-ray vision". "His match plans always worked. He would dissect the opponents and always find solutions with his analysis. It was phenomenal," he told Spox.

After his squad announcement raised eyebrows last week, England fans will be hoping that Tuchel's X-ray vision is still as sharp as ever. Three decades after he left his bar job to return to football, the German now faces what could be the toughest test of his career - to bring the World Cup back to England.

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