Watzke, Tuchel and Seven Years of a Never-Healing Fracture

In an anonymous passage of play, I find the entire meaning of the game. And this week's anonymous passage of play was not on the pitch. It was in a television studio in Germany, where a 67-year-old man sat facing the camera and blurted out two words: "Yes! Yes!" - short, crisp, without a moment's hesitation. Those two words rang out like a slap across the face of a legend, though the speaker never raised his hand. Hans-Joachim Watzke is not a man who likes noise. He belongs to the Ruhr type - says little, works hard, hates artifice. But when Sky's programme "Meine Geschichte" (My Story) put the camera in his face and asked about Thomas Tuchel, Watzke opened a door few expected. He spoke of an "idea" that had once flickered in his mind: bringing Tuchel to manage the Germany national team. He spoke of the immense disappointment Tuchel caused him, not in professional terms, but in the way people treat each other when the curtain of mourning has not yet fallen. And he spoke of forgiveness - the kind that came to him "without any effort at all". The press called it a "completely astonishing statement". I read that headline and found it laughable. Astonishing? For someone who has lived long enough in football, astonishing is a 19-year-old youth player striking from 35 metres in the 88th minute and not a single newspaper mentioning his name the next day. A former chief executive remembering an old coach - that is not astonishing, that is the nature of memory. People are not astonished when they see fire burn. They only wonder why it flared up exactly when it did. And this story flared up exactly when it did for a very simple reason: Thomas Tuchel is the manager of the England national team. Let us state this plainly before anyone rushes to conclusions: Watzke did not propose Tuchel for Germany. He had the "idea", yes. But an idea in the head of a 67-year-old man and a decision at a federation boardroom table are two entirely different things. Between them lies the distance of power, of responsibility, of phone calls no one minute-takes. Watzke said clearly: "It is not my decision who becomes Germany coach." And those who truly held decision-making authority in the aftermath of the 2026 World Cup were Oliver Bierhoff and later Rudi Völler. So why the fuss? Because people always want to believe in stories with heroes and villains. We want to believe that Watzke - the man who let Tuchel go in 2026 - is now admitting he was wrong. We want to believe there was a missed opportunity, a chessboard overturned, a door that never opened. But the truth is far duller than that: an old man recounted an idea that once flickered in his head, and then he let it pass. That is all. Yet, hold on. If that were all, this story would not be worth writing. What made me sit down and type these words does not lie in that pallid "what-if". It lies elsewhere, deeper, more painful: a fracture that has existed for seven years, and now, when both parties have been through so much, someone finally dares to speak of it with a suspicious serenity. Let us go back to 11 April 2026. Dortmund, Germany. The Borussia Dortmund team bus was on its way to Signal Iduna Park for the Champions League quarter-final against AS Monaco. This was no ordinary match. This was the match the whole city had been waiting for. This was the match Thomas Tuchel's side - one of the youngest and most fiery teams in Europe at the time - entered as a genuine force. Then three bombs exploded. They had been planted on the roadside near the hotel where the team was staying and were detonated just as the bus passed. The windows shattered. Defender Marc Bartra was injured on his wrist and needed surgery. The others sat inside, heard the blast, saw glass fly everywhere, and for a few brief seconds, they did not know whether they were alive or dead. The match was postponed. Then moved to the next day. And here, at this moment, the story begins to grow complicated. Because there are two ways to tell this story. The first - the way the club leadership and Tuchel told it - is a story of courage. The team decided to play. They took the field just one day after the bombs went off. They lost 2-3 to Monaco. They fought like soldiers. And all of Europe stood up to applaud. The second - the way the players themselves told it - is strikingly different. Marcel Schmelzer, the captain at the time, later said he "could not spare a single thought for football". Nuri Sahin, one of the senior figures, said the same. They did not want to play that day. They were pushed onto the pitch in a state of psychological collapse. And the decision to play, according to their account, was not made by the coach. This is the crux that few Western reports emphasise enough: there was a contradiction in the storytelling between the coach and the dressing room. One side said, "we chose to play". The other said, "we were pushed onto the pitch". The difference sounds small, but it is the nucleus of everything that followed. Watzke remembered that. He remembered that Tuchel went outside and told his side of the story - that the team had decided to play, that the players were united. He remembered that the internal dressing-room story had been brought into the light, distorted, simplified. And for a man of the Ruhr, who prized discretion and loyalty to what is said within four walls, that was a betrayal. "When internal processes are no longer kept to yourself, and go outside and are distorted" - that was how Watzke described his disappointment. It sounds trivial. But in football, sometimes the trivial is everything. Now let us talk about what truly makes this story important: power. In modern football, we often speak of the manager's power, the players' power, the media's power. But there is a less-discussed form: the power of the man with no decision-making authority. The power of those who sit in the meeting room, who have opinions, who have influence, but who do not hold the final vote. Watzke, as DFB vice-president, belongs to this group. He has a voice. He has prestige. He has a network stretching across Europe. But when it comes to appointing a national-team coach, he is not the decider. He said so clearly in the interview, and this is one of the most important details the press underplays. Because it unveils a reality many fans do not know: football federations do not operate like clubs. There is no "all-powerful president". There is a system of shared authority, where several people sit at the same table and no single one can make the call alone. In the aftermath of the 2026 World Cup - when Germany were eliminated in the group stage for the second tournament running - those at the decision-making table were Oliver Bierhoff, sporting director, and later Rudi Völler. Bierhoff left his post. Völler took over. And amid those changes, the name Thomas Tuchel was raised as an idea - only an idea. Why Tuchel? Because professionally, Tuchel is one of Europe's elite coaches. He has worked at Mainz, Dortmund, Paris Saint-Germain, Chelsea, Bayern Munich. He has won the Champions League. He is a tactical master. Watzke spoke of him without stinting: "You can do it blind" (meaning Tuchel was good enough to lead any team without a second thought). But here we touch one of the great paradoxes of modern football: a coach can be a tactical genius and still inflict wounds that will never heal. On the tactics board, he is a scientist. In the dressing room, he can be an enigma. In the eyes of the board, he can be a man not to be trusted. The story of the relationship between Tuchel and Watzke is not a story about a good or bad coach. It is a story about two different communication cultures. One side is a culture of discretion (Watzke, a man of the Ruhr, who believes what happens in the meeting room stays in the meeting room). The other is a culture of transparency (Tuchel, who believes speaking the truth is a virtue, even when that truth wounds). No one is wrong in this story. And no one is right. At this point, let us widen the frame. Because the story of Tuchel and Germany does not exist in a vacuum. It exists in a larger current: the movement of Europe's top coaches. Over the past three years, we have witnessed an unprecedented rotation. Thomas Tuchel took charge of England - the first German coach in history to lead the Three Lions. Hansi Flick, who once managed Germany, went to Barcelona and produced a spectacular revival. And Jurgen Klopp, after leaving Liverpool, was linked with the Germany job after the 2026 World Cup. What is this? This is the globalisation of the coaching profession. No more borders. No more nationality. A German coach, child of a disciplined football culture, can lead England - the nation of partings. A coach once criticised in Germany can become a hero in Spain. And a man no longer working in football can be invoked as a potential saviour after any defeat. Against that backdrop, the Watzke-Tuchel story is not merely personal. It is an expression of a larger trend: national federations are becoming more like clubs. They chase talent. They compete. They calculate. And sometimes, they fail in very similar ways. And this is the point I want to state plainly, even if it irritates some: the story "Watzke wanted Tuchel to coach Germany" is a story inflated by those who wrote it. The original headline called it "completely astonishing statements". But read every word again. Watzke said he had the "idea". He did not say he proposed it. He did not say he fought for it. He did not say he called Tuchel or laid out a plan. He only said that, in his head, a thought passed through. And then he admitted clearly: it was not his decision. So where is the "astonishment"? A 67-year-old man, years later, recalls a thought he never acted upon. If that is the threshold of astonishment, then every football conversation over a beer in Vietnam is a blockbuster. But there is a deeper reason this story was pushed. It is because we - the writers and readers of sports news - are addicted to confrontation. We want relationships to have winners and losers. We want Watzke to admit he was wrong to let Tuchel go. We want Tuchel to be furious, to retaliate, to prove something. We want a permanent fracture so we can pick a side. But football does not work that way. Football works like a heart's trajectory. It is never straight. It curves. It spirals. And sometimes, two people who once stood on opposite sides of a fracture find each other at another point on that curve. Watzke and Tuchel found each other. Not in friendship. Not in full reconciliation. But in something harder to define: the acceptance that a painful memory need not be a life sentence. So what is the lesson here? It is not a lesson about power. It is not a lesson about tactics. It is not a lesson about personnel management. It is a much simpler lesson, and perhaps a much harder one to accept: in football, and perhaps in life, we often retell the stories of our past in ways that suit our present. Watzke told the story of Tuchel not to admit a mistake, but to close an unfinished chapter. Tuchel did not respond, because for him, perhaps, that chapter closed long ago. Both men have moved on. Watzke is at the end of his football career. Tuchel is at the peak of pressure - managing England, one of the most scrutinised jobs on the planet. The night of Kazan taught me that the highest peak is only a fulcrum for the fall. And perhaps the same holds for every human relationship in football: we never know when a moment will become a memory, when a parting will become permanent, when a handshake will be the last. What remains, after all, is not the headlines. Not the quoted lines. But something far more fragile: the capacity for forgiveness. Watzke said forgiveness came to him "without any effort". I do not entirely believe that. No one forgives without effort. But I believe he chose to forgive. And in an industry where resentment is cultivated as an asset, choosing forgiveness - late, reluctant - is still an act worth noting. Forgiveness is not an event. It is a process. Watzke said he and Tuchel now "talk properly". That is a simple sentence, but it contains a whole journey. Because to go from "the greatest human disappointment of my career" to "talking properly", both men had to pass through what? Imagine the first meeting after things quietened down. Perhaps in a stadium corridor. Perhaps at a Bundesliga event. Perhaps after a match where both happened to be present. They shook hands. They exchanged pleasantries. And then, over time, pleasantries became real conversation. That is how forgiveness works - not through a dramatic moment, but through hundreds of small moments no one records. This matters because it shows an aspect of football we often overlook: relationships in this industry do not end when contracts do. They transform. They mature. They can become something else - not necessarily better, but at least different. Look at the people in this story. Marcel Schmelzer, the captain of that year, who said he could not spare a single thought for football that day. Where is he now? What does he think of what happened? Nuri Sahin, who said the same, has since moved into coaching. Perhaps he looks back on that period with a different, deeper understanding. And Marc Bartra, injured in the attack, who went through surgeries and months of recovery - does he still remember the feeling of sitting on that bus? Perhaps he remembers every day. These people are not lines in a news bulletin. They are human beings who passed through a horrifying experience and had to keep living. And the Watzke-Tuchel story - however important - is only a thin layer on the surface of a much larger story. Now let us talk about Germany. Because the Tuchel story cannot be separated from the story of a football power in decline. Germany were eliminated in the group stage of the 2026 World Cup. That was the first time in 80 years. The country was shocked. People called it an accident. People said the team would come back stronger. But then the 2026 World Cup arrived, and history repeated. Germany were eliminated in the group stage again. This time, no one called it an accident. Watzke said he had a "feeling" things would get difficult. He said the matches afterwards "were also a disaster". And he said he was probably proved right. This is where I want to pause and think about something. In football, we tend to judge coaches by results. If the team wins, the coach is good. If the team loses, the coach is bad. But Hansi Flick's story poses a much harder question: what happens when a good coach fails? Flick was regarded as one of the best coaches in German football. He had taken Bayern Munich to a historic sextuple. He arrived at Germany like a saviour. But then the team failed. And now he is doing the same thing at Barcelona - reviving a club sunk in crisis. What does this say? It says the problem may not be the coach. It may be the environment. It may be the structure of the Germany team - a structure that has become obsolete, out of date, no longer fit for modern football. And this, perhaps, is where the Tuchel story becomes noteworthy. Because if the problem is the environment, then changing the coach - whether Tuchel or anyone else - will not solve anything. It is a surface change. A painkiller, not a cure. Let us talk about the structure of the DFB, because this is the part most reports skip. In modern football, national federations are no longer purely administrative organisations. They are media corporations, global brands, complex political systems. The DFB, with more than 7 million members, is the largest football federation in the world. Running such an organisation is not unlike running a small country. Within that system, the roles of leadership positions are clearly divided. There is a federation president, who represents the organisation politically. There is a sporting director, responsible for the sporting side. There are vice-presidents, who handle specific portfolios. And there is the national-team coach, responsible only for the matches. Watzke, as vice-president, does not sit in the sporting decision-making chain. He can offer opinions. He can consult. But he cannot command. This is very different from his position at Dortmund - where he was chief executive, the man with the final say on everything. This is a power transition the press seldom analyses. A man who once held absolute authority at a club is now part of a collective system, where power is shared and checked. It is not a demotion. It is a change in the nature of power. And perhaps, in that change, Watzke learned something. He learned that some things are beyond his control. He learned that sometimes an idea in his head is only an idea - nothing more. And he learned that, at a different point in life, one can look back on the past with a serenity that at the peak of power, one could not have. There is one detail in this story that I consider the most important, and it is barely mentioned: Watzke said he told the English FA they "could do it blind" when they appointed Tuchel. Let me stress this. A man who once said Tuchel was the greatest disappointment of his career, who once had a bitter row with Tuchel, who once could not forgive Tuchel for years - that man told the English they should hire Tuchel without a second thought. This is no small act. It is a complete separation of personal judgment from professional judgment. Watzke, though residual disappointment may remain, did not let it colour his assessment of Tuchel's ability. That is an admirable maturity. I have followed football for more than fourteen years. I have seen many people unable to separate personal emotion from professional assessment. I have seen coaches sacked simply because they did not get along with the chairman. I have seen players sold simply because they said the wrong thing. In an industry where ego is often larger than collective interest, Watzke offering an objective assessment of Tuchel - a man with whom he had deep conflict - is something worth noting. And it also shows us that, perhaps, forgiveness is not only an emotional matter. It is also an intellectual one. To forgive someone, you must understand that a person is more complex than a single mistake. You must understand that a past conflict does not define a whole person. And you must understand that sometimes, judging someone correctly requires rising above your own emotions. Over the past fifteen years, we have witnessed a profound change in how coaches move across the map of European football. In the old days, a coach usually stayed in one country. German coaches led German clubs. Italian coaches led Italian clubs. English coaches had very few opportunities abroad, and vice versa. It was a world divided by borders and culture. But that world has vanished. Today, a German coach can lead England. An Italian coach can lead Spain. A Spanish coach can lead an English club to a title. Football has become a genuine labour market, where talent moves by opportunity, not nationality. Tuchel at England is a symbol of this change. He is the third foreigner to manage England, after Sven-Goran Eriksson (Swedish) and Fabio Capello (Italian). But more remarkable is how he was received. There was no significant backlash. No articles about a German being unable to understand the soul of English football. No cultural concerns. Only the acceptance that, in modern football, competence matters more than nationality. This is an evolution worth pondering. Because it shows that football, despite lingering nationalism, is becoming more open. A coach can bring his philosophy anywhere. A club can learn from any culture. Football is becoming a common language, where ideas move more freely than people. But there is a flip side. As coaches move ever more, they bind themselves ever less to any one place. They become mercenaries, moving from project to project. And when there is no long-term attachment, no place to call home, the relationships they build also become more fragile. Perhaps that is why Watzke - a man of another era, an era when people stayed at a club for twenty years - was so wounded when Tuchel left the way he did. To understand why this story matters, we need to understand the larger context: the crisis of German football. Germany were once the emblem of stability. For more than half a century, they were always present in the knockout rounds of major tournaments. They won four World Cups. They were a machine that never stopped. That was the identity of German football: efficiency, discipline, endurance. But in recent years, that machine has malfunctioned. Not just in disappointing results. But in a loss of direction. Germany no longer know who they are. They no longer know what their style is. They tried to adapt to modern football - to tiki-taka, to pressing, to attacking play - but lost what made them who they were. In the book "The Machine Without a Heart" that I wrote after the 2026 World Cup, I argued that German football had become too focused on technique and had forgotten its core values: fighting spirit, resilience, the ability to withstand pressure. When Germany were eliminated in the group stage that year, it was no accident. It was the consequence of a decline that had begun years earlier. The 2026 World Cup confirmed it. Germany failed again. This time, even the most optimistic had to admit the problem was not just the coach. It was a systemic problem. Against that backdrop, considering Thomas Tuchel - a coach known for a complex tactical philosophy, for the ability to build winning machines - was a rational response. Tuchel is not an inspirer in the classic sense. He is not a coach who lifts a team with speeches. But he is a tactical master, a man who can restructure a team from the foundations. But is that enough? That was the question the DFB faced. And the answer they gave - continuing with Hansi Flick, then switching to Julian Nagelsmann - shows they believe in gradual change, in rebuilding the foundations, rather than immediate revolution. Now let us talk about an aspect the press rarely covers: the pressure on Thomas Tuchel at England. Watzke said Tuchel imposes maximum pressure on himself. He said it as an explanation, perhaps as a way to understand why Tuchel acted the way he did in the past. But it is also a warning. Managing England is one of the hardest jobs in world football. Not because England are weak - they have some of the most talented players in Europe. But because the pressure from media and fans is unimaginable. Football in England is not just a sport. It is part of national identity. Every England match is a national event. Every defeat is a tragedy. Every victory is a source of national pride. In that environment, a man like Tuchel - known for perfectionism, for absolute focus on detail, for a tendency to pressure himself - can be a double-edged sword. His perfectionism can raise the team's standards. But it can also create tension in the dressing room. And when things go wrong, when pressures from outside and inside compound, a man like Tuchel can become isolated. I have followed Tuchel across many clubs. I saw him build excellent teams at Dortmund, at Paris, at Chelsea. I also saw him leave in circumstances that were not pretty. At Dortmund, he left after the bus attack. At Paris, he left after clashes with the board. At Chelsea, he left suddenly after winning the Champions League. At Bayern, he left while the team was on course for the Bundesliga title. There is a pattern here. Tuchel is an excellent coach, but he is also a difficult man to work with. Not because he is a bad person. But because he is a perfectionist, a man who sets high standards for himself and others, a man who does not compromise. In football, that can be a wonderful quality. But it can also be a recipe for conflict. And that is why Watzke's story is noteworthy. Because Watzke, despite going through one of the worst periods in his relationship with Tuchel, could still see him objectively. He could still say Tuchel was good enough to manage England. And he could still say it sincerely, without a trace of bitterness. If we widen the frame beyond the personal story of Watzke and Tuchel, we see something more interesting: the change in how national football federations operate. For decades, national federations were conservative organisations. They hired coaches based on relationships, not competence. They favoured insiders, people who understood the culture, people who did not rock the boat. They had no succession plans. They had no long-term strategy. They only reacted to events as they occurred. But that is changing. National federations are becoming more professional. They hire professional sporting directors. They build structured development systems. They have long-term plans. And they are not afraid to seek talent from beyond their borders. The DFB is a prime example of this change. In recent years, they have hired coaches of different backgrounds, from Hansi Flick to Julian Nagelsmann. They have changed their organisational structure, appointing Rudi Völler as sporting director. And they have brought people like Watzke into leadership - people with club-football experience, not just federation football. These changes are not random. They are responses to a new reality: in modern football, national federations can no longer rely on heritage and tradition to stay competitive. They must adapt. They must change. They must learn from what works - wherever it comes from. That is why the story of Watzke considering Tuchel matters more than it appears. It is not just the story of an individual. It is the story of an organisation searching for its path in a changing world. And in that process, it must face hard questions: How to balance heritage and innovation? How to hire the best people, even if they are imperfect? How to forgive those who have hurt you, if they are the best people for the job? These questions are not only for the DFB. They are for all of us - those working in any industry, in any organisation. Because people are always complex. And managing people - with all their conflicts, emotions, memories - is one of the hardest challenges we face. Let us return to Dortmund's 2026-2026 season, because it holds important clues. It was a turbulent season. Dortmund, under Tuchel, played a fiery attacking game, but also a fragile one. They had superb young talents - Ousmane Dembele, Christian Pulisic, Julian Weigl - who would become stars of European football. They had seasoned veterans - Marco Reus, Nuri Sahin, Marcel Schmelzer. And they had a coach regarded as one of the sharpest tactical minds in German football. That season, Dortmund finished third in the Bundesliga. They reached the final of the German Cup and won it. They reached the Champions League quarter-finals and were eliminated by Monaco - the team they had lost to in the match affected by the bus attack. In hindsight, it was a successful season by objective standards. A trophy, a top-three finish, an impressive Champions League run. Many clubs would dream of such a season. But for Dortmund, it was a season of fractures. Fractures between coach and board. Fractures between coach and some players. Fractures between what was said publicly and what was thought privately. The bus attack worsened those fractures. It created a situation where every decision became sensitive. Who decided to play? Who was responsible? Who told the truth? Those questions had no clear answers, and in that ambiguity, misunderstandings arose. Tuchel, in his book, spoke of what happened after the attack. He said he believed the team should play, that playing was the best way to confront fear. He said the players agreed. But some players said otherwise. They said they did not want to play. They said they were not asked. They said they were placed in a situation they could not refuse. The truth lies somewhere between these accounts. But the important thing is not objective truth. The important thing is how each person felt that truth. And for Watzke, the feeling of betrayal was real. He felt Tuchel had crossed a line. He felt that what was said internally had been taken outside. And in a culture that prizes discretion, that was an unforgivable sin. The Watzke-Tuchel story also raises a question about the nature of memory in football. In this industry, memory is a commodity. Clubs sell memories to fans - moments of glory, historic victories, legends. Players live on memory - goals, titles, moments of brilliance. And coaches are judged by memory - what they did, what they built, what they left behind. But memory is also a dangerous thing. Because memory is never honest. It is distorted by emotion, by time, by what we want to believe. When Watzke remembers Tuchel, he is not remembering a real person. He is remembering a version of Tuchel created by his own memory - a version embellished by disappointment, by hurt, by loss. The same is true of all of us. When we remember someone who hurt us, we do not remember their real self. We remember the pain they caused. And in that memory, the real person is obscured, distorted, replaced by an image we have created. But there is a way past that. It is forgiveness. Not the forgiveness of forgetting - of erasing what happened. But the forgiveness of recognition - realising that a person is more complex than their mistakes. Realising that one action does not define a whole person. Realising that memory can be distorted, and the truth may differ from what we believe. Watzke has travelled part of that road. He has not forgotten. He has not said everything is resolved. He said he and Tuchel "talk properly". That is progress. That is maturity. That is a man admitting his memory may be incomplete, and his relationship with another may be rewritten. But here I want to offer another perspective, a counter-intuitive one. Because while everyone is praising Watzke's forgiveness, I wonder: is he forgiving, or is he reframing the story? There is a subtle difference between forgiving someone and retelling the story of someone in a way that benefits you. When Watzke said he forgave Tuchel "without any effort", he placed himself in the position of the dispenser of forgiveness - a higher position, a position of moral power. He did not say "we misunderstood each other". He said "I forgave him". That does not mean he is insincere. But it does mean this story, like every story, is told from one perspective. And that perspective is Watzke's, not Tuchel's. We do not know what Tuchel thinks of this forgiveness. We do not know whether he feels he needs to be forgiven. We do not know whether he feels the bus attack and what followed were his fault. This is what the press often overlooks: when we read a story about a relationship between two people, we usually hear only one side. And that side - in this case Watzke - has an interest in shaping the story. He is at the end of his career. He is building his legacy. And telling a story of forgiveness is one way to do that - to show he is a magnanimous man, a man who has risen above personal conflict, a man who can see things objectively. I am not saying Watzke is lying. I am not saying he has bad intentions. I am only saying this story - like every story - has no single truth. It has multiple truths, told from multiple perspectives. And our task, as readers, is to recognise that. In fourteen years of following football, I have learned one thing: no story is entirely true. Every story is a version of the truth, told by someone with the right to tell it. And the right to tell a story is a form of power. It shapes how we remember the past. It shapes how we understand the present. And it shapes how we think about the future. At this point, I want to speak of an aspect I consider the most important of this story: the relationship between football and forgiveness. Football is a sport of relationships. Unlike tennis or golf, where individuals compete against individuals, football is a team sport. It demands cooperation, trust, understanding between different people. And in that environment, conflicts are inevitable. In a football club, dozens of people work together every day. There are players, coaches, doctors, analysts, directors, owners. Each has an ego, a viewpoint, a goal. And when those egos collide, when those viewpoints clash, when those goals are incompatible - fractures form. Those fractures can be small - an argument about tactics, a disagreement about training schedules. Or they can be large - a scuffle, a threat, an accusation. But whether large or small, they need to be healed. Because a team cannot win if its members cannot work together. That is why forgiveness matters in football. Not because it is a virtue. But because it is a practical requirement. In an environment where people must work together every day, carrying grudges is a luxury no one can afford. But forgiveness in football differs from forgiveness in everyday life. It is usually more professional than personal. People do not forgive because they have overcome their feelings. People forgive because they must keep working together. It is a pragmatic forgiveness, not a purely emotional one. And in the case of Watzke and Tuchel, perhaps that is what happened. Not that they resolved every difference. Not that they became friends. But that they found a way to coexist in the same world - the small world of German football, where people know each other, where people meet at stadiums, at events, in corridors. Let us speak of something I find remarkable in this story: the complexity of judging a coach. In football, we tend to judge coaches by titles. A coach who has won the Champions League is a good coach. A coach who has never won a major title is an ordinary coach. It is a simple, easy-to-understand, and entirely wrong way of judging. Because titles depend on many factors beyond a coach's control. They depend on the quality of players. They depend on the club's budget. They depend on luck - a penalty not given, a goal in stoppage time, an injury at the most critical moment. They depend on the opponents you face, and when you face them. Thomas Tuchel is a perfect example of this complexity. He won the Champions League with Chelsea - an impressive feat. He won the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich - an expected feat. He won Ligue 1 with Paris Saint-Germain - an almost guaranteed feat. But he also failed where he was expected to succeed. He left Dortmund without a major title. He left Paris without the Champions League. He left Bayern in a season where the club lost the title. So is Tuchel a good coach? The answer depends on how you define "good". If "good" means winning titles, then Tuchel is a good coach but not a great one. If "good" means building teams with organisation, with clear tactics, with the ability to compete against the strongest, then Tuchel is one of Europe's top coaches. Watzke, in speaking of Tuchel, chose the second definition. He judged Tuchel not by titles, but by ability. He said Tuchel could lead any team. That is an assessment from a man who worked directly with Tuchel, who saw him work every day, who saw how he prepared for matches, who saw how he handled pressure. And this is what I think we should learn from this story: judge a person by their ability, not by their achievements. Because achievements can be influenced by countless factors. But ability is a more stable thing, a thing that reflects a person's true self. Now let us speak of the future. Because this story is not only about the past. It is also about what is coming. Over the next two years, world football will pass through a series of major events: Euro 2026 in Germany, the 2026 World Cup in North America, and the never-ending club competitions. Against that backdrop, the fate of coaches will remain a hot topic. Thomas Tuchel will lead England at Euro 2026 and the 2026 World Cup. If he succeeds, he will become one of the greatest coaches in England's history. If he fails, he will become the next name on the long list of coaches who could not bring football home. Hansi Flick will continue his work at Barcelona. If he succeeds there, he will prove that Germany's failure was not his fault. If he fails, questions about his ability will return. And Germany will continue searching for the road back to the top. With Julian Nagelsmann as coach, with a new generation of talented players, they will try to redefine their identity. Will they succeed? Will they recover what was lost? Those are questions no one can yet answer. But amid all that, one thing will not change: human nature. Coaches will continue to clash with boards. Players will continue to have conflicts with coaches. And people will continue to have to find ways to forgive, or not forgive, in order to continue their lives. That is why the Watzke-Tuchel story is not a personal story. It is a universal story about people in football. It is a story about how we deal with wounds, with losses, with disappointments. It is a story about how we find ways to keep living and working in a world where everyone is imperfect. Let me tell a story from my own experience. In 2026, when I was a third-year student in Shanghai, I covered a match in the Chinese second division. Shanghai Jiading beat Wuhan Zall 2-1. A young player, Huang Yuhao, 19, scored from a 35-metre strike in the 88th minute. Not a single newspaper mentioned his name the next day. I wrote a 2,400-word piece about him, called "Heart's Trajectory". It received 7,300 reads, and an editor invited me to collaborate. But what I remember most is not those numbers. What I remember most is the feeling of sitting in a nearly empty stand, watching that 19-year-old run towards the touchline, raising his arms to the sky, with no one to share that moment with him. That was the moment I learned that football is not only about what happens on the pitch. It is about what happens in the heart. It is about the small moments no one sees, the moments only those who truly pay attention can grasp. I think of that moment when I read the Watzke-Tuchel story. Because this, too, is a small moment no one sees. This is a story about what happens after the cameras stop, after the reporters leave, after the headlines are written. This is a story about wounds not spoken of, disappointments not admitted, relationships not healed. And that is why I write this piece. Not to retell a story anyone can read in the papers. But to look at what lies beneath the surface of that story - what can only be seen if you know where to look. The night of Kazan taught me that the highest peak is only a fulcrum for the fall. I learned that in 2026, when I watched Germany vs South Korea on a dormitory screen. When the score was 0-2, a Korean friend of mine wept. The German players stood frozen on the pitch. And I understood that nothing is permanent. No empire lasts forever. No team is invincible. The Watzke-Tuchel story is another expression of that lesson. Because in football, as in life, everything can change. A relationship thought dead can be revived. A wound thought unhealable can be healed. A person thought to have become an enemy can become someone respected. But for that to happen, something is needed. A willingness to look back. A willingness to admit we may have been wrong. A willingness to let go of grudges and keep walking. Watzke did that. He did not deny he was hurt. He did not deny Tuchel disappointed him. But he also did not let those feelings define his relationship with Tuchel in the present. He found a way to live with the past without being bound by it. It was not a heroic act. It was not a great act. It was only a human act - a small act of maturity. So what remains after this story? I do not think it is a sensational headline. Headlines fade. Articles are forgotten. Stories become lines in an archive no one reads. What remains is something more fragile: a hint that, even in an industry built on competition and conflict, there is space for forgiveness. A small space, imperfect, incomplete - but real. Watzke and Tuchel will not become close friends. They will not have dinner together. They will not tell each other about their lives. But they have found a way to coexist in the same football world. And sometimes, that is all we can hope for. On the highest peak, one sees nothing but one's own fragility. And in that fragility, we learn that we are not islands. We are connected by invisible threads - shared memories, shared experiences, shared wounds. And in those connections, there is a potential for healing. Thomas Tuchel is at the peak of one of the most pressured jobs in world football. Hans-Joachim Watzke is at the end of his career in football. Both are living in different chapters of their lives. But at some moment, in a darkened studio, one man remembered another and spoke of him with respect. That is not an ending. It is a beginning. Every gap on the pitch is a promise not yet spoken. And the gap between Watzke and Tuchel - after years of being empty - now has a fragile bridge across it. It may not bear the weight of a full relationship. But it is enough for two old men to meet in the middle, shake hands, and keep walking.