Thomas Tuchel looks back on lessons of last Wembley appearance, and what a recent tennis classic teaches about finals…

Thomas Tuchel has proved to be a coach adept at winning cup finals in the little over a year he has been at Chelsea, although one blemish exists on that record, and it is a match he reflects upon ahead of another chance to lift a trophy today.Manchester City were beaten in the Champions League final, Villarreal in the UEFA Super Cup match, and very recently Palmeiras were seen off to win the FIFA Club World Cup, but when the Blues took on Leicester City in last season’s FA Cup final, we lost out to an excellent Youri Tielemans goal.It was a tight encounter, with Kasper Schmeichel pulling off a couple of exceptional saves and VAR denying us a last-gasp equaliser, and now Tuchel and his team have the chance to ease that Wembley pain with another cup final outing at the stadium at the earliest opportunity available.‘You learn from every defeat and from every experience and we lost a very, very close match by one goal against a strong, competitive Leicester side,’ begins Tuchel.

‘The result was not what we expected and not what we wanted but even if it feels like this, there are always two teams involved in every cup final and people regard very quickly the one who loses this match as a loser.‘But look what it takes to come to a final. If you have a tennis grand slam final like the last one between [Rafael] Nadal and [Daniil] Medvedev, who is the guy to raise the hand and say Medvedev is a loser after five-and-a-half hours of tennis out of this world.‘So we are very quick in judging and we are very quick in saying what he has to learn. Maybe he just also learns that he is on the level and he had everything it takes, and at some point, you need a bit of luck.

‘You need to accept that okay, we left it all out there. And this is what we will do again.’Tuchel adds that Chelsea intend to enjoy today’s final to a certain degree, but tension will be involved too and that will limit the smiling, as the competitive nature and will to win take over.‘We want to put our teeth into this match and into the task of beating Liverpool,’ our head coach continues.

‘We want this absolutely. Some days like last season's FA Cup final, you need to accept it. This is sometimes the message that sport teaches you and this is good because you can take it into life that this is how it goes, it's not always sunshine.‘But we fight hard to make it the best day for us and for our supporters today.’