FC Bayern are out of the Champions League after a bitter 2-1 defeat at the Estadio Santiago Bernabéu. Former Bundesliga official Horst Heldt sees head coach Thomas Tuchel as the main culprit for the late defeat against Real Madrid.
After Aleksandar Pavlovic could only be stopped by Luka Modric during a Bayern counter-attack in the 88th minute, the 20-year-old remained on the ground and had to be treated. In the ensuing Real Madrid attack, the equaliser was scored to make it 1:1 and Horst Heldt sharply criticised Thomas Tuchel’s decision not to take off his youngster, who appeared to be injured.
According to Heldt, FC Bayern „could well have prevented the equaliser, which made everyone a little nervous. FC Bayern only made four changes and everyone knows that the substitutes all warm up in the second half. So it wouldn’t have been a problem for me to replace him,“ the manager, who has also worked at Schalke, grumbled on Sky.
Should Thomas Tuchel have substituted Aleks Pavlovic at all?
In Heldt’s opinion, the best decision would have been to „bring on Leon Goretzka, for example, and put on the jersey. They had the ball. So it wouldn’t have been a problem to tell Manuel Neuer to play the ball out“, because according to Heldt, Pavlovic „was tired. It wouldn’t have been a problem.“
Heldt is of the opinion that Tuchel should have „coached the situation better“, as at this level „little things decide the result“. „Everyone involved should have reacted, but they didn’t and waited,“ rumbled the 54-year-old
However, a paragraph in the rules, which the long-serving top manager seems to have missed in his criticism, states that only three substitution windows are permitted in a 90-minute match. This means that although Bayern had only made four of their five possible substitutions, Tuchel was not allowed to make any further changes as he had already utilised all three windows. As a result, he would not have been able to replace Pavlovic with Goretzka in normal time.
