On the Sky programme "Meine Geschichte", the DFB vice-president said yes when presenter Riccardo Basile asked whether he had thought about putting Tuchel on the German national team's bench.
"Yes, not in the summer. (…). But I had already had the idea," said Watzke, adding: "We went out pretty miserably in Qatar. And then? Then, over a night or two, you do start thinking about what could happen now." Why did he not push for the man who is now England manager to replace Hansi Flick? Although the now 67-year-old has been working for the DFB since January 2022, he was not involved in the decision-making at the time, after Germany had gone out in the group stage of a World Cup for the second tournament in a row in Qatar.
"Back then Oliver Bierhoff was still there, now it's Rudi Völler. It's not my decision who becomes Germany coach," said Watzke, before adding: "But the basic attitude was simply: we are carrying on with Hansi Flick. And Hansi is an excellent coach, you can see right now what he's doing at Barcelona." Still, Watzke already had a "feeling" that after "such a failure" things could become difficult. "In hindsight I was probably proved right as well, the matches afterwards were also a disaster!"
Why did Thomas Tuchel and Hans-Joachim Watzke fall out?
Even so, Watzke's thought experiment about Tuchel comes as a surprise. The relationship between the long-serving Borussia Dortmund chief and the former BVB coach was long seen as broken. The row goes back to the attack on the Bundesliga club's team bus on the way to the Champions League quarter-final against AS Monaco in April 2017. Tuchel, still in charge at the time, later made it sound as though Watzke had decided his team still had to play. Some players are said to have decided for themselves to do so.
UEFA moved the match to 6.45pm the following day. Refusing to take the field would probably have meant an automatic defeat. On the other hand, with hindsight figures including then captain Marcel Schmelzer and Nuri Sahin also said they were unable to spare any thought for football after the attack. BVB lost 3-2 and went out of the competition after a 3-1 defeat in the second leg.
Asked whether Tuchel's portrayal had been the "greatest human disappointment" for him personally, Watzke replied: "It was certainly a big one. Yes! Yes!" How long did he struggle with being portrayed in public with an image that did not correspond to the truth? "That's then a huge problem, because if you no longer keep the internal processes to yourself, and it all goes outside and is then distorted as well. But I realised that no matter what I said, or no matter what others said, there were simply certain circles that wanted it that way. It just fitted well that some soulless football official was telling the players what to do. It simply fitted the image well."
IMAGOHave Hans-Joachim Watzke and Thomas Tuchel made up again?
Watzke stressed, however, that forgiving Tuchel had taken no effort on his part. "It's not even about forgiving or not forgiving. I still consider Tuchel an excellent coach," he said, before adding: "At that moment we had a massive disagreement, that's clear. But at some point things always move on. And when we see each other today, we talk to each other properly, we speak. And when the English asked me what I thought of Tuchel, I only said: you can do it blind. You'll get one of the best coaches. Thomas Tuchel was also under maximum pressure."
Tuchel had "imposed that pressure on himself", Watzke explained. "And as I said, in the end, even afterwards, I always had respect for that, because I don't know whether, when you were sitting on the bus in that moment, things perhaps felt different again for you, because that simply has to be respected as well."
BVB may have found a conciliatory end to the season in 2017 by winning the cup, but Tuchel still left afterwards. After spells at PSG, Chelsea and Bayern Munich, the 53-year-old took over the England national team in 2025. Meanwhile, Watzke played a decisive role in the installation of Jürgen Klopp as Julian Nagelsmann's successor after the 2026 World Cup.