Zsolt Low: The pride of Hungary who is confidant to both Tuchel and Chelseas players

May 2024 · 15 minute read

Back home in Hungary, Zsolt Low finds himself in exalted company. Chelsea’s assistant manager played an integral part in the club’s Champions League final success back in May so, when the list of compatriots to have won UEFA’s elite competition is trotted out, is mentioned these days in the same breath as Ferenc Puskas, Bela Guttmann and, from the women’s game, Zsanett Jakabfi. Mighty Magyars, all.

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Others of Hungarian heritage – Stefan Kovacs, Emerich Jenei, Laszlo Boloni and Dzsenifer Marozsan – also tend to feature on the roll-call of players and managers. Low would concede that a position within the backroom technical staff, however prominent, might not equate to the other seven’s respective feats, for all that his inclusion among such vaunted compatriots is still, rightly, a source of pride.

The 42-year-old’s progress, from the Red Bull stable of clubs via Paris Saint-Germain to Chelsea, is tracked closely by the Hungarian media and those within a national football set-up that is enjoying something of a renaissance.

He is a talented and charismatic coach who has regularly been linked with managerial positions at clubs across the German Bundesliga and is surely destined, eventually, to be put in charge of a team somewhere. He is also a figure who, until the time comes for him to step out on his own, will remain one of Thomas Tuchel’s key lieutenants: a shrewd man-manager and confidant in whom Chelsea’s head coach and players alike place their trust. An assistant who is unafraid, even encouraged, to challenge his boss’s outlook.

Low himself would stress the importance of the collective in everything Tuchel and his team have achieved over recent seasons. He would point to the contributions of everyone from the sports scientists and analysts, to the nutritionists and physiotherapists behind the scenes, as being critical in giving the team on the pitch an edge. There is a vast network of backroom staff whose contributions tend to be overlooked. In contrast, at Chelsea, he is one of the more conspicuous members of the coaching team and one of two assistants at Tuchel’s shoulder on the touchline.

The other, Arno Michels, was a lower-division player turned coach and head of a German FA (DFB) regional youth development centre before joining Tuchel as his No 2 at Mainz in 2009, where Low was the club’s left-back. Michels, hugely respected within the game, followed Tuchel to Borussia Dortmund, PSG and the Premier League alike. The highly-regarded video analyst, Benny Weber, made the trek around Europe with them.

Low (right) playing for Hungary in 2008 Zsolt Low, right, playing for Hungary in 2008 (Photo: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images)

By contrast, the Hungarian — inevitably nicknamed Jogi because he shares a surname with 2014 World Cup-winning former Germany coach Joachim ‘Jogi’ Low — only started working in the manager’s inner circle in 2018, having cost PSG €1.5 million in compensation (the promise of an exhibition match at the Red Bull Arena was floated as an alternative) to Leipzig. The connection between the quartet was established quickly, driving the French club’s success over the next two and a half seasons. They are a close-knit team. The dynamic within their group works. Their friendship was merely reinforced by those first four months in London earlier this year. 

The coaching staff left their families behind, the pandemic having complicated the relocation process. Low’s wife and three young daughters remained in Paris, where two were halfway through the academic year at school and the third was only 10 months old. They stayed in a hotel but, with no other distractions, spent more time at the training ground in Cobham, having flung themselves into their work 24/7. Low described the rush of signing a contract, overseeing a first training session in alien surroundings and sending out a side to face Wolverhampton Wanderers, all within 36 hours of their arrival, as a “hara-kiri operation”, albeit it actually constituted a welcome opportunity to venture out of his comfort zone.

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That goalless draw on January 27 proved to be the first of 30 matches in all competitions over the final four months of last season.

The coaches spent every day together through that frantic period, flitting between their hotel and the training ground. It helped that they gelled with Joe Edwards and Anthony Barry, significant figures retained from Frank Lampard’s staff. “If you’re spending 10 to 12 hours in each other’s company every day of the week, it’s essential you get on,” Low told InfoRadio in his homeland recently. “There is always a different division of labour in every coaching hierarchy, but we do a lot of things together: from planning training to taking the drills, speaking with the players, preparing and delivering team-talks and video analysis, match tactics and selection, even communication from the sidelines during games… what to change, whom to replace.

“The dialogue between us all is constant. It never stops. I can’t break it down beyond that and say one person only does this, and another only does that. It’s a loose process in which everyone is involved. We all trust each other. When Thomas took me on, he knew I’d been through a proper development at Red Bull in Austria and Germany. I’d worked for good coaches — Ralf Rangnick and Ralph Hasenhuttl.”

It is Low’s ability to connect with the players that has marked him out. He is bubbly and tactile, a blur of high fives, bear hugs and “How’s it going?” questions as he stops at every table around the canteen at Cobham to check in with players, coaches and administrative staff alike. Those who work alongside him have warmed to his positivity. He is the life and soul, a jovial character flinging himself into the post-training games of foot tennis and volleyball, or the small-sided staff football matches, as happy to be pulling other people’s legs as he is to be the butt of the joke.

It was the same at PSG’s Camp des Loges. Upon his appointment in the summer of 2018, Tuchel had recognised the need for someone in his entourage who was a bit younger than him and closer to the current generation of players — a figure who might better gauge the mood inside the dressing-room, striking up a bond with players from different cultural backgrounds. Low, so open and good-natured, fitted the bill.

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At Chelsea, players have made a habit of coming to Low and opening up, whether they want to discuss something that has just happened in a game or during the day’s training session, or even aspects of life that might be affecting them away from their day job. Thiago Silva, a senior voice in the squad who played under Tuchel and Low at PSG, took the coach to one side in a corner of the changing room after one recent fixture at Stamford Bridge and the pair conducted a lengthy, in-depth discussion about the match just ended: what had gone right; where things had faltered; what could be done better next time. The assistant commands a level of trust.

The man himself has spoken about his desire to communicate openly with his players. “I like to know everything about them, not only on the pitch but off it, too,” explained Low, who is fluent in English and German and will always give other languages a crack if required. “That’s one of the jobs of an assistant. The head coach has to stay slightly separate and maintain a bit of distance from the squad, so he can make bigger decisions for the good of the group. Even his assistants can’t get too close. We can’t be the players’ mates. It’s three steps distance to the head coach, and maybe one step to me and the other assistants.

“But I can be more direct with the players. I can get to know them as individuals, to talk to them about their families, their lives. We often discover we actually have a lot in common. Knowing them better helps you recognise if things are not right, and to smooth out any difficulties. Communication at Chelsea is a lot easier than at PSG. The language barrier is less of a problem.”

He has spoken, only half-jokingly, of mimicking the circle of trust extolled by Robert De Niro’s character in comedy movie Meet The Parents and its various follow-ups.

Inside the circle, the theory goes, coach and players can help each other far more readily.

Low was no mug as a player. He began in the youth system at Ujpest in Budapest, graduating into the senior set-up while still in his teens and playing in the old UEFA Cup, before playing the bulk of his career in Germany. He endured relegation from the Bundesliga with Energie Cottbus in 2003 and played alongside the current US men’s national team manager, Gregg Berhalter, in the club’s defence.

“Zsolt was a very special person and a great colleague,” said Berhalter, when asked about his former team-mate earlier this year. “He was always very concerned about the team. I’m not surprised how successful he’s been in the years since, because he’s a loyal person with a very good work ethic.”

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The Hungary international soaked up knowledge from his manager at Cottbus, Eduard Geyer, and impressed with his feverish work ethic. Team-mates recognised his interest in the mechanics of the game. Ronny Nikol, with whom he competed for a place on the left of the defence, recalled him “forever interrupting team meetings with tactical questions”. Geyer thought Low was “too nice” to thrive in management, but acknowledged his character – as someone with whom people clicked – might make him “the perfect link between head coach and team”.

His route back to the Bundesliga took him via Hansa Rostock to Hoffenheim. Rangnick, Hoffenheim’s manager at the time, spent weeks attempting to persuade the defender to drop another level into the regional third tier, with a face-to-face meeting in Berlin eventually proving decisive. Yet, after successive promotions and a solitary appearance back in the top flight, Low returned to the second tier with Mainz in January 2009 and helped them go up too. By the time the next season began at the higher level, the young Tuchel had taken up the reins.

Low (front row, furthest right) in 2009 when at Mainz (Photo: Thorsten Wagner/Bongarts/Getty Images)

The Hungarian, who had gained the last of his 25 caps while with Hoffenheim, had turned 30 with injuries limiting his impact in the first team over the ensuing two years in the Rhineland. Tuchel still saw value in his presence, however, and attempted to persuade the club’s hierarchy to extend Low’s stay beyond 2011 ostensibly as one of his assistants, training with the senior set-up, fitness permitting, and acting as a link between the team and coaching staff. These days, the retention of such a senior figure to help guide younger players has become far more commonplace. Yet, at the time, the proposal felt radical. The hierarchy were unconvinced of its merit and resisted.

Low returned, instead, to Budapest and studied sports management at the Hungarian Football Association. He was on holiday in the United States in 2012 when the ever-persistent Rangnick called and suggested he become an assistant coach at Liefering, recently established as Red Bull Salzburg’s “farm” team, in the Austrian third tier. He had not even completed his coaching badges by the time the club were promoted to the second division a year later. Having graduated to parent club Salzburg, he duly worked as Adi Hutter’s No 2 as they claimed the domestic double in 2014-15.

There would be three years subsequently at RB Leipzig, another promotion within the Red Bull structure, working initially under Rangnick whose tactical principles – that frantic gegenpress – were drummed home and became second nature. Low led the training drills at the Bundesliga club, his voice booming out over the practice pitches. Those duties were maintained under Hasenhuttl as the team finished second in the Bundesliga in their first year at that level, with a young Timo Werner their leading goalscorer.

“Zsolt is a fantastic coach and person,” said Hasenhuttl, who is approaching the third anniversary of his appointment at Southampton. “In the second year, before the end of the season, I knew he was going to leave in the summer (of 2018) to follow Thomas (Tuchel) to Paris Saint-Germain. He wanted to work under a new manager whose football was a little bit more possession-orientated, to learn new things.

Ralph Hasenhuttl with Low when they were at RB Leipzig (Photo: VI Images via Getty Images)

“We had, in Leipzig at that moment, quite a one-dimensional way of playing football. Or, rather, the guidelines we followed were very one-dimensional. Thomas knew him from before (at Mainz) and had seen how his football coaching had developed.”

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At PSG, Low is credited with making some of the biggest names in the game – Neymar, Kylian Mbappe – team players. The Hungarian was the glue bonding them together. He has taken more pride from outsiders commenting on how PSG seemed united and more selfless as a group, “and finally playing as a team”, en route to their first Champions League final in 2020 than in the silverware they won in France along the way.

“When we arrived, we had a rock band with 14 front men,” he told Kicker magazine late last year. “But if everyone wants to play solos, then a concert sounds terrible. Our task was to make sure everyone found their instrument, and their place, and is happy with it. That’s the only way it sounds good.”

The PSG staff achieved that through constant dialogue and openness, explaining why players were being asked to follow certain instructions. Low was close to the squad. Indeed, just as with some of the team at Leipzig, he has remained in regular contact with a few of his former charges in Paris even after Tuchel and his staff were sacked abruptly last Christmas Eve.

“A lot of people ask me what exactly my role is with the team,” Low said last week, in an interview with Hungarian broadcaster Digi Sport. “We do everything together, from the match planning and the team selection, to the opposition scouting and match analysis. We meet in a small group and live in each other’s pockets, together all the time, when we’re at the training ground. During games, we discuss what we are seeing, and at half-time relay what we need to change.

“The manager always has the last word, but the process involves everyone.”

Yet if the impression is one of complete harmony approaching the implementation of a plan, then that is deceptive.

Low and fellow assistant Arno Michels are encouraged by Tuchel to challenge his viewpoint and provide constructive criticism, to question the head coach’s outlook and ensure he is never blinkered in his thinking. Low did the same under Hutter, Rangnick and Hasenhuttl, picking his moments to test the water and pose the right questions. To ask, “Hold on. Are we sure this is the way we want to go?”

Low, right, slides in to join Chelsea’s celebrations after winning the Champions League final last season (Photo: Chris Lee – Chelsea FC/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)

To that end, he has admitted the relationship between the head coach and his assistants is not always harmonious. “If I have an opinion on something, I’ll articulate it and stand up strongly for what I think,” said Low. “That happens quite often. We’ll spend hours amongst ourselves discussing things – sometimes forcefully, even heatedly, but always with respect – before the head coach makes his final decision.

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“I’m not just someone who sits there, nodding his support, silently, to everything the boss says. That wouldn’t work.

“If Thomas decides we should go in one direction and it ends up at a dead-end, he is perfectly within his rights to turn round and say, ‘Why didn’t you step in and say something?’ Playing the wise guy afterwards isn’t my thing. Those arguments and discussions we have – Thomas, Arno and I – are part of the way we work, exploring all possibilities. At least Thomas knows that if I do nod my head in agreement, he can be reassured.”

Those discussions take place in small coaches’ meetings, and never in front of the team. Theirs is always a united front when addressing the playing staff with the tactics and approach having been ironed out in advance. Low suggests this “game”, knowing when to challenge the head coach to provoke fresh ideas, has been the secret of the group’s success. It has been a means of ensuring all the bases are covered, while keeping their approach fresh and inventive.

It has been to Chelsea’s benefit. This opportunity had been unanticipated. The coaching quartet had initially intended to spend some time out of the game to recharge their batteries following their collective sacking in Paris last December, only for Lampard’s dismissal a month later to deliver the chance to work at a Premier League club ready-made for success.

Low has suggested that, while PSG had attempted almost to grow an elite club from scratch and “started by building the roof of the house first, at Chelsea they have had the foundations in place for some time”. There is continuity in terms of the staff at Cobham, even if the focus is always drawn to the revolving door policy in the dugout. The chance to work there was too enticing for Tuchel and his entourage to turn down, for all that their regular fitness coach, Rainer Schrey, did decide to walk away from club football at the age of 61. He has since moved to the German city of Heidelberg, intending to open a rehabilitation clinic for injured athletes.

There was certainly never any question of Low not following Tuchel to England, even with interest expressed in his services from clubs back in Germany and Austria. Now, with his family having also moved over in the summer, he is properly settled and at ease, forever a significant cog in the head coach’s slick machine.

That May evening in Porto, Low’s 73-year-old father and brother watched on from the stands as Chelsea lifted their second European Cup. “It filled me with immense pride that he was able to be there, alongside my brother and my wife,” added the assistant manager. “I hope Hungarians are proud of me, too.”

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Low’s presence on that eight-strong list, trumpeted by local media back home, would suggest they are.

(Top photo: Catherine Ivill/Getty Images)

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