“Thomas Tuchel is brilliant”: 20-year-old coach from Sunderland reveals his idols

One of Britain’s youngest assistant managers, Thomas Kelly-Hanford has opened up on how studying managerial greats Jose Mourinho and Thomas Tuchel has transformed his coaching philosophy.  

Kelly-Hansford, 20, has coached for over four years and in that time has experience in youth football (u10-u14), all the way up to first team football in both the male and female game.

He is currently first team coach for Sunderland RCA and assistant manager for Gateshead Ladies.

When asked about who he studied Tom said: “Mourinho, for his passionate character and winning mentality. I think he is one of the best in the game. Tactically, I think Thomas Tuchel is brilliant. His ideas and way of working is something I find incredibly interesting.”

Tom further added about the former new England manager by saying: “He has quite peculiar ways of training, different concepts, different methods that he uses. He’ll never train on a full-sized pitch, he will use smaller sized footballs. It’s the idea that come match :, it becomes a lot easier because you’re giving players this massive challenge during training, so matches feel easier. Tuchel is a big one and he is still someone that I try and study now. So, him getting the England job is massive because I absolutely love him.”

Kelly-Hansford described his philosophy: “I want to control every aspect of a game. I believe in trying to dominate possession to do this. We will always aim to be on the front-foot and forward-thinking, but we will be patient and wait for the right moment to break lines, I encourage my players to be comfortable on the ball and enjoy being subject to a high-press. I like my teams to be able to control games out of possession as well and be adaptable so if we need to sit in and play on the transitions we can.

“I believe more in principles and concepts than formations and systems. The formation we use will differ from the point of us building an attack, maintaining an attack, or creating within an attack. I am flexible and will select a formation which best suits the players we have available, however the in possession concepts and principles we follow will always remain the same.”

The similarities are already evident with the new England manager about how he wants to control every aspect of the game, and that Kelly-Hansford believes you need to dominate possession to do this. Also, Tom spoke about being flexible and how he selects a formation to suit the players best. This is similar to Tuchel because at PSG he played a 4-3-3 and then at Chelsea, he used a 3-4-2-1 and then recently at Bayern Munich he went back to a 4-3-3 to get the best out of the players available.

Kelly-Hansford has high aspirations in coaching and has already made big strides in the game and given the early comparisons to the likes of Tuchel, it will be interesting to see where the 20-year-old goes in the future.