Thomas Tuchel has moved to play down speculation of a move for Erling Haaland & said he “fell into a trap” by joking about the prospect of partnering the player with Romelu Lukaku.
The Chelsea coach gave an interview to SportBild after picking up the German newspaper’s Coach of the Year award, confirming his team had looked into signing Haaland.
Tuchel’s comments reportedly provoked a furious reaction at Dortmund, who may be ready to lose Haaland, next summer given he has a €75m release clause which becomes active at the end of the campaign with some top clubs monitoring the situation.
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“I fell into a trap,” Tuchel said. “I got an award in Germany. I got an award from a newspaper and they asked me about a player.
“Normally I never, never speak about other players because simply I never, ever do. Then we were making more or less fun about it. I should have known better because [I was] making fun about it and being a nice guy and answering a question instead of ‘no, I don’t want to answer a question’.
“Getting this award and I joke about a double striker with Romelu in October and then it gets like we put in an offer. That was the context but OK, I should have known better.”
Chelsea were originally interested in Haaland but eventually signed Lukaku for €115m as Dortmund sold Jadon Sancho to Man United and refused to allow any further high-profile departures.
Haaland’s superb form, totalling 70 goals in 69 matches for Dortmund across all competitions to date, suggests he will be a success at whichever club he joins. But Tuchel said there would be no guarantees.
“It is interesting that we as German staff, we become very humble when we see the difference in performance in the Bundesliga and obviously how much harder it is to produce the same numbers in the Premier League,” he said.
“It is, by the way, the big question in every transfer you do. This player performs in Germany, Spain, Italy or the other way around in England, can he also perform in the other country, the other culture, in the other team, in the other style of football? That is for me one of the big questions because you can scout them on any physical, mental level, do tests with them and observe them, how they behave.
“On social media, they let you observe their lives so you know pretty much everything except for the fact what does it mean if you perform in club A in country B, what does it mean for your club C in country D? This will be the question.
“Every player is different so to make it a general rule, it is maybe not possible but it seems it is the toughest league here and to produce outstanding stats. This cannot be a surprise. You are proud to have this league in England and you should be. It is big fun to watch and maybe bigger fun to work in it. That’s the way it is.”
