Thomas Tuchel rubbishes claims of over-rotating Bayern Munich’s squad for the Saarbrücken loss

Bayern Munich’s shock loss to FC Saarbrücken in the second round of the DFB-Pokal remains to be one of their most shocking results in recent memory, but they have responded quite well. Since falling out of the cup to the 3. Liga side, Bayern has gone on to beat Borussia Dortmund 4-0 in the Bundesliga and Galatasaray in the Champions League, looking much more like their usual selves.

As had been heavily expected, Thomas Tuchel did make a handful of rotations for the match against Saarbrücken, as it was an ample opportunity for him to give some of his starters a rest and some of his younger, or more fringe, players a chance to get some minutes. On paper, there was absolutely nothing wrong with that sentiment, but the result made that decision look a lot more costly in hindsight.

Former Bayern player Mehmet Scholl had come out and suggested that Tuchel purposely rotated the squad heavily for that Pokal match in order to send some sort of message to the club’s front office that he feels his squad is a bit too thin. The club’s bosses have expressed their dissatisfaction with some of Tuchel’s comments about the squad and the signings he has not been able to make yet, but all of the disagreements have since been settled and the club’s bosses are fully backing Tuchel.

In response to Scholl’s accusation, Tuchel referred to the claim as a bit of “nonsense.” “Absolute nonsense. We rested some players in the Pokal and shared the workload, to also give a chance to players who had earned it. The responsibility for the line-up always falls on me,” he retorted when he was asked about the topic in the press conference ahead of the Bundesliga match against Heidenheim (via @iMiaSanMia).

Much has been made about Tuchel’s public comments to the press talking about how he wants to make a handful of key signings, but Scholl’s suggestion perhaps comes with a little bit of a bias. If Bayern had not lost that match to Saarbrücken, it would be rather difficult to see Scholl making the same claim with regards to Tuchel wanting to send a message to Bayern’s front office and hierarchy.