CHELSEA manager Thomas Tuchel insists that his side are the underdogs going into the Carabao Cup final against Liverpool at Wembley on Sunday.
The final will be Chelsea’s third since Tuchel took over at the club in early 2021, the German leading them to win the UEFA Champions League and FIFA Club World Cup titles.
However, Tuchel claims his fellow German Jurgen Klopp and his Liverpool side are the favourites on Sunday. Tuchel and Klopp are familiar with each other from their time in Germany as well as the Premier League over the last year. Tuchel has lost nine times to Klopp, the most he has lost against any manager.
While Chelsea have wobbled a bit in recent games and dropped out of the title race, Liverpool are on a run of nine consecutive wins in all competitions, including a 6-0 thrashing of Leeds United in midweek that took them to within three points of league leaders Manchester City.
“Playing against teams who are coached by Jurgen is not only pure pleasure, because they give you a hard time and of course we’re facing him with a very strong Liverpool team on a very strong run of games, run of results, in brilliant form,” Tuchel acknowledged as he previewed the final.
“I think to a 51 or 55 per cent they are the favourites because of recent form, recent results. But we all know, like when we were the favourites against Lille and maybe still are, we know that in the end when we arrive, Lille will play to their full level and they will play the role as an underdog and not accept it as a disadvantage. So will we.”
The former Borussia Dortmund and Paris Saint-Germain manager admitted that he had not decided yet what he would tell the players in the last minutes before kick-off.
“It’s not decided yet but you hear me say a lot of times that we take care about the daily process,’ said Tuchel. “I don’t think that you take care of the final on the day before the final or on the day of the final.
“You take care of the final on a daily basis before, when nobody thinks about the final, because this is what brings you there. Then the closer you get, the more routine, the more behaviours, the more principles must be installed that you can trust yourself and that you can be free because in the end the tension is growing.
“We try to give less information, we try to trust them and trust in ourselves. For me this is not the moment to do crazy things, crazy talks, but even that changes from occasion to occasion, from feeling to feeling. It depends how you feel your team, what was the approach to the final and the opponent.”
