Domenico Tedesco interview: ‘Everywhere you go, you have Fenerbahce fans. You feel this electricity’
“If you work for a big club like Fenerbahce, with a massive fanbase, not winning the league for 11 years, everybody’s really hungry for titles. You feel it in daily life, because everywhere you go, you have Fenerbahce fans. On our way to the stadium, every match we play at home, you feel this electricity.”
Domenico Tedesco was reflecting on life in the Fenerbahce hot seat ahead of Monday evening’s Intercontinental Derby, one of Europe’s fiercest rivalries.
Fenerbahce hail from Kadikoy on the Asian side of Istanbul, while Galatasaray are based in the European side. They are separated by just one point at the top of the Super Lig, adding another layer of drama.
Tedesco, 40, arrived at Fenerbahce on September 9 after Jose Mourinho’s underwhelming spell — a tenure that brought an initial wave of hope and excitement but ultimately fell flat. He was sacked in August following Fenerbahce’s Champions League elimination to Benfica.
Since taking over, Tedesco’s side is unbeaten domestically, averaging 2.4 points in his first 10 league matches, with the highlight being a 3-2 comeback win away to Besiktas at the start of this month. Their strong form and free-flowing style have Fenerbahce fans dreaming of a first title since 2014, a painful period that has seen Galatasaray crowned champions six times. Fans on social media have compared Tedesco to Ottoman Emperor Mehmed II, something he said was surreal but amusing.
Marco Asensio celebrates scoring during Fenerbahce’s comeback win over Besiktas (Ahmad Mora/Getty Images)
Only two weeks after Tedesco joined, the club’s presidential elections saw Sadettin Saran succeed Ali Koc. It was a testing period.
“The mood was really negative,” he told The Athletic. “It’s not just that they changed the coach. We also had this election at the very beginning, so everybody was nervous about that.
“With the election, it can also influence the staff and players, so, for me, it was a completely new experience. The election day was also a game for us, so it was pretty hard to be honest. But now everything has settled down, we have a good team, and we have found our rhythm.”
Tedesco also had to quickly adjust to a new country and an unfamiliar league, which has come under the spotlight this month because of the betting scandal probe that has led to the suspension of 1,024 players and 149 match officials, distributed across all leagues in Turkey.
During Mourinho’s time at Fenerbahce, he frequently vented his anger at the quality of the officiating in Turkey, while in March 2024, three months before Mourinho joined, the club threatened to pull out of the league altogether because of what they saw as historical unfair treatment from the authorities.
How has he found the standard of officiating so far?
“I have to say the refereeing is really good,” Tedesco replied, in a marked change of tone from his predecessor. “Every game we have played, it was never a topic. They try their best, and that’s it. We also have to pay attention because sometimes if one thing happens, you put everybody in the same category, and that’s also not fair.”
Tedesco was born in Italy but grew up in Stuttgart, Germany. He started out coaching the under-sixes and under-nines at his amateur side ASV Aichwald, as The Athletic previously reported.
He was taking an engineering degree, but he decided to put that on hold to focus on football when he was offered the chance to take over the Stuttgart under-17 side.
Despite his lack of professional experience, he was given a full-time role in senior management at Bundesliga 2 club Erzgebirge Aue, who he saved from relegation in 2017. He has since held positions at Schalke, Spartak Moscow, RB Leipzig and, most recently, the Belgium national team.
On taking the job at Schalke, who he led to second in the Bundesliga before a difficult second season that led to his dismissal, he was labelled a “laptop coach”. What did he make of that criticism?
“I took it more in a funny way,” he replied. “You can plan a lot of great training sessions, you can plan a lot of tactics, but the human side is the most important thing.
“If you don’t have this connection with the players or with the team, if they don’t feel it, it’s very difficult because ultimately they are on the pitch and they must play with heart and passion for the club, for the fans, for the coach, for everything.”
He admitted it was helpful for a manager to have played at the highest level, but said it was not essential.
“I think it’s an advantage because you know how it works inside the changing room, when you have a certain situation, how to handle it,” he said. “But it’s far away from the job of the coach; it’s completely different.
“To be a manager, to be a coach, you have so many different disciplines. You are a coach, you are an analyst, you are a friend, you are a brother, you are a psychologist.”
Tedesco’s two years in charge of Belgium showed early promise but ended in disappointment at Euro 2024 and the Nations League that follows.
“Until the Euros, we played really well, with really good results,” he said. “We didn’t lose a game for 16 months, so we qualified in first place with a lot of points and a lot of goals scored. But at the Euros, we lost our first game against Slovakia. That was not easy. I would have liked it if the first defeat had been earlier. We still beat Romania in the second game; it was good. So we qualified for the round of 16, but then we faced France and lost.”
He said they went into the Nations League with the idea of giving game time to more of the younger players coming through, such as Charles De Ketelaere, Lois Openda and Maxim De Cuyper, but that proved tough against high-quality opposition.
“The moment we put the young players in and the results are not coming because then you lose, for example, 2-1 at home against France, playing really, really good, then the people get disappointed,” he said. “So it was a transition moment.”
Tedesco and his Belgium players after beating Sweden 3-0 in March 2023 (Virginie Lefour/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images)
Tedesco was sacked after winning just one match in Belgium’s six Nations League games in 2024.
His time with Belgium was also marked by a high-profile dispute with Thibaut Courtois, where the goalkeeper refused to play for Tedesco after being overlooked for the captaincy, The Athletic previously reported.
Courtois has since returned to the Belgium side under new head coach Rudi Garcia.
“I think this kind of situation can always happen,” Tedesco said. “It was a big topic, but to be honest, everything has been said on this.”
Tedesco said he learnt a huge amount from the job, as he spent lots of time watching Belgian players in matches around the world, and had the chance to work up close with world-class players, such as Kevin De Bruyne.
“Once Kevin is your player, you have probably more of this detailed view of what he’s doing on the pitch,” Tedesco said. “He finds spaces that not many players can find, and he plays inside some spaces that many players cannot play.”
However, Tedesco, who speaks four languages fluently and is now learning Turkish, said he was glad to step away from international football.
“I was missing the daily work,” he explained. “During the Euros, you have the team for like four, five, six weeks, that was my best time there, when we had the team together. The qualification was brilliant, but after five, six days to leave the team, leaving the players when they go back to their clubs was always a bad feeling.
“It’s a completely different job. I learned to make things easier because you don’t have any time to train patterns, or whatever, so you must simplify things. It’s more like a director, manager or scout in one person.”
In Turkey, Tedesco is living by himself, away from his wife and two daughters, who have stayed in Stuttgart. How does he cope with that?
“At the beginning, it’s always tough,” he said. “Especially because, as a national coach, you have your family time. It seems now a little bit sad, but you get used to it, because every day you are on your targets. When you are at home in the evening, you think about it, but you have FaceTime or WhatsApp calls.
“Every time we have an international break, I try to see my family for at least two or three days, but, of course, you need a strong family, a strong wife, and I have that.”
This is Tedesco’s first club management role since his time at RB Leipzig, which started brilliantly but unravelled alarmingly.
He took over mid-season, with RB Leipzig 11th in the table. He guided them to Champions League qualification in fourth, as well as winning the club’s first major trophy, the DFB-Pokal in 2022. A Leipzig side that included Josko Gvardiol, Christopher Nkunku, Dani Olmo and Dominik Szoboszlai also reached the semi-final of the Europa League, losing to Rangers.
However, there was a worrying drop-off in his first full season in charge.
As The Athletic reported at the time, there were disagreements in the transfer window. Humiliating defeats early in the season, a 4-0 loss to Eintracht Frankfurt and a 4-1 defeat to Shakhtar Donetsk in the Champions League, saw Tedesco sacked after just nine months in charge.
“The club wanted to extend my contract early in the summer — but I wanted to wait and see how the collaboration developed,” Tedesco said. “That seemed to surprise the management somewhat. And it was a little bit difficult in the transfer market. I wanted the team to stay like it was. If you are successful, I don’t think there is a big need to change the team. But at the end, it was a little bit more like that… it was a little bit of a question of trust that is very important in football.”
Tedesco is a flexible manager. He has used 4-4-2, a back three, and at Fenerbahce, he started with a 4-2-3-1 but is now using a 4-3-3. Having tried many systems, which one does he now favour?
“Honestly, I like many. I think what’s important is always which team you have, which kind of players you have… the best players in the best position is a very important principle for me.”
How would he describe his football philosophy?
“Out of possession, I like to press high, because we want the ball. And once we have the ball, I like to dominate the game, score goals and create chances. So, out of the possession, a little bit heavy metal. In possession — and I told my Brazilian guys this in our last game — a little samba.”
For Tedesco, attention now turns to the derby on Monday evening, and the chance to leapfrog Galatasaray at the top of the table. Win that, and the Fenerbahce fans will be doing their own samba on the streets of Istanbul.
