When Thomas Tuchel reflects on some of the key periods that shaped his life, the Borussia Dortmund coach’s mind often drifts back to the days when he worked as a waiter in a Stuttgart bar, trying to earn enough money to get through university after a knee injury prematurely ended a playing career that never got as far as the Bundesliga.

Carrying beer glasses to tables provided a sense of perspective but the real uplift in that experience had more to do with the fact that Tuchel discovered for the first time that he could make friends and earn respect for reasons that had nothing to do with kicking a ball.

Football had consumed Tuchel through his childhood and it was inevitable that it would do so again once he took up coaching – even now he will sometimes wake up in the middle of the night and write down an idea.

Yet for a man who is so immersed in the game, he breaks with all of the usual stereotypes around football and seems like something of a free spirit.

When he took a sabbatical in 2014 after five seasons at Mainz, where he was a revelation after being promoted from his role as under-19 coach, he kept a low profile, declined all interviews and befriended an 80-year-old man at his local swimming pool.

Enthralled by the pensioner’s depth of knowledge on subjects that had nothing to do with football, and in light of one of their regular conversations, Tuchel decided to pay a visit to the Kunsthistorisches museum in Vienna to see one of Pieter Bruegel’s most famous pieces of art.

A couple of months ago Tuchel sat down with Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, a professor in literature at Stanford University and a fanatical Dortmund supporter, to discuss a wide range of topics that included philosophy and how to work with young talent. Tuchel was in his element.

When he met Johan Cruyff, not long before the Dutchman passed away, he soaked up as much information as possible, scurried back to his hotel room afterwards and scribbled down everything he could remember.

Then there was that dinner with Pep Guardiola at Schumann’s restaurant in Munich, where witnesses reported seeing salt and pepper pots being moved here, there and everywhere as the tablecloth turned into a tactics board.

Those two men remain close, often exchange messages and have been in touch recently, with Guardiola happy to pass on Manchester City’s ‘scouting feed’ – a special camera view that shows the whole pitch – from their last 16 tie against Monaco in the Champions League, after Dortmund were drawn against the Ligue 1 club in the quarter-finals.

Tuchel, though, does not need anyone to tell him how to play against Monaco on Tuesday and Guardiola would never go down that path.

With the first leg in Dortmund, Tuchel will encourage his team to attack with the same sort of freedom and conviction that swept Benfica aside in the previous round.

When the players came in at half-time during the second leg of that tie, Dortmund were 1-0 up on the night and the aggregate score was 1-1. Tuchel’s message was to abandon any thoughts of caution and chase as many goals as possible. Forty-five minutes later they were celebrating a 4-0 victory.

On the same evening Barcelona pulled off the mother-of-all comebacks to eliminate Paris Saint-Germain and it is worth looking up Tuchel’s post-match interview with Jan Aage Fjortoft, moments after the Dortmund coach had watched those dramatic final few minutes in Spain unfold on a television screen in the dressing room, to get an idea of just how passionate he is about football. Luis Enrique, Barcelona’s manager, could not have looked happier.

Tuchel, 43, is a big fan of Barcelona but he is not wedded to one playing philosophy and often changes his system.

His decision to turn Dortmund into a team that seek domination, with as well as without the ball, was born from a pre season performance in Japan shortly after he took over.

Tuchel and Arno Michels, his assistant, had not set out to play a particular way at that stage but when they rewatched their 6-0 win against the J-League side Kawasaki Frontale on a flight to Singapore, they were so excited by what they saw, in particular the rhythm of the players’ passing, that they called the squad together to see the footage as soon as they arrived at the team hotel. It was too good to ignore.

Innovation and creativity is at the heart of Tuchel’s work. He once made his players hold tennis balls to prevent them from pulling shirts when defending set pieces.

A more routine way of dealing with that problem would have been to blow his whistle and tell off defenders every time he caught them grabbing an opponent during dead-ball drills on the training ground, but Tuchel has little time for that sort of coaching, reasoning that it makes players think they are doing something purely for the manager.

That is why when he wanted to discourage too many straight passes he set the training pitch up along diagonal lines so that the exercise, rather than his instructions, changed habits.

Tuchel is incredibly demanding during training, as players who have worked for him with testify, but problems are not always solved on the grass.

After seeing Henrikh Mkhitaryan’s frustration in a match that Dortmund won comfortably not long after his appointment, Tuchel gave the midfielder a copy of The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, which he came across while learning how to meditate.

Tuchel already felt a connection with Mkhitaryan following a meeting that took place several weeks earlier and was sure that the Armenian, an avid reader, would embrace a book that was all about visualisation and clarity of thought.

Whether it was down to the book, Tuchel or something else, Mkhitaryan went on to play his best football for Dortmund by a distance that season.

Tuchel is a fascinating character, but being different and not playing by the old-school managerial rules, right down to refusing to give one on one interviews to newspapers, means that he is not to everyone’s taste in Germany.

Some have portrayed him as aloof, a bit too cool and sophisticated for his own good, even going as far as to describe him as arrogant and cold.

Yet that is not the way that Tuchel comes across to those who have spent time in his company, especially away from football.

He is refreshingly down to earth, affable, erudite and happy to talk about anything and everything, going right back to the days when he was a part-time coach for Stuttgart, dividing his time between training schoolboys and working on spreadsheets for a sports rehabilitation centre after graduating with a degree in business administration.

Tuchel also does a nice line in self-deprecating humour, whether laughing at the way jaws dropped when he took his first training session as Stuttgart’s under-14 coach and explained to the parents what he was going to work on over the next couple of hours – “Don’t ever do that again,” one of the academy staff told him afterwards – or chuckling at the reaction of his backroom staff when he told them about the time he bumped into a Premier League manager on holiday and was treated like an annoying autograph hunter.

It was only a couple of years ago and Tuchel hoped to share some ideas over lunch. Instead he retreated to his sunbed after being fobbed off with a comment about the weather, sensing that the manager had never heard of him.

There would be no repeat of that episode now. The Dortmund job has elevated Tuchel’s status to one of the most exciting young coaches in Europe and at the same time subjected him to greater scrutiny, largely due to the fact that he is working at a much bigger club but also because he replaced Jürgen Klopp.

Tuchel took over at Mainz from him as well but Dortmund is different. Klopp was Dortmund. Perhaps he still is for some at the club.

Comparisons are inevitable, yet they also seem pointless and it is easy to imagine how tiresome it must be for Tuchel to deal with that issue. Klopp, after all, is a unique character. He celebrated Dortmund goals as if his life depended on it, swigged beer like one of the locals, captivated people with his stirring speeches and made the 25,000 fans on die Südtribüne feel like he was their personal friend.

Tuchel is full of admiration for Klopp and the extraordinary ability his predecessor had to convince people to follow him – Menschenfänger is the word they use in Germany – yet he is a totally different personality to the Liverpool manager. It would not be Tuchel’s style, for instance, to walk on to the pitch at the end of a match at Signal Iduna Park and salute ‘the Yellow Wall’ or stand at a bar in Dortmund with a beer in his hand – he is teetotal for a start.

Some Dortmund supporters have accepted all of this, recognise that the team are going through a period of transition in more ways than one – the club sold three of their best players last summer – and appreciate that Klopp’s time, though magical, had run its course.

Others feel frustrated that Tuchel is not more emotionally connected to them to the point that his wider relationship with the fans, the club and the city seems to overshadow what he is trying to do with the team. The critical question is whether that feeling extends to the boardroom.

Tuchel’s contract expires at the end of next season, but as things stand there are no talks scheduled to discuss extending that deal and it is hard not to read anything into the silence, with the impression lingering that Dortmund’s key decision makers, led by Hans-Joachim Watzke, the CEO, are not wholly convinced by Tuchel.

Rumours emerged in Germany last month that Arsenal had lined up Tuchel to replace Arsène Wenger, but no contact was made between the two parties. Tuchel has no plans to go anywhere. He is committed to Dortmund, eager to try to bring success to the club this season – they are 180 minutes away from a place in the last four of the Champions League and face Bayern Munich in the semi-finals of the German Cup in a couple of weeks’ time.

There is a feeling that his journey at the club is just starting, reinforced by the idea that he is in the process of putting together a new team after the heart was ripped out of it last summer, when Mats Hummels, Ilkay Gündogan and Mkhitaryan all departed. Tuchel had hoped to keep all three, yet the club ending up waving goodbye to a trio of hugely influential players in the space of six weeks.

Mkhitaryan was the last one to go and his departure seemed critical. In his only season under Tuchel, the Armenian scored 19 goals and assisted 24 – more than he had managed in the previous two campaigns combined.

Tuchel saw him as a role model because of his professionalism as well as his ability. There was one European game when Dortmund returned in the early hours and Tuchel noticed Mkhitaryan’s car was still at the training ground long after everyone else had gone home. He was curious as to what was going on and found him sat in an ice bath at 4am.

Ultimately, however, Tuchel was powerless to do anything about Mkhitaryan’s transfer to Manchester United, Gündogan’s move to Manchester City and Hummels’ decision to rejoin Bayern Munich, all of which served as an unwelcome reminder of Dortmund’s standing in European football’s pecking order. It was a huge blow, not just in terms of the talent drain but also psychologically, and meant that last summer became about rebuilding rather than complementing a team that had finished runners up to Bayern Munich.

It was never going to be an easy process and the current campaign has been testing at times. Critics point to the extent that Tuchel rotates his team, yet Dortmund, who lost 4-1 at Bayern Munich on Saturday, have had more their fair share of injuries – Marco Reus and Mario Götze, two of their biggest names, have appeared in less than half of the matches, forcing changes.

When Dortmund won 2-1 at Sporting Lisbon in October in the Champions League – a competition in which they broke the goalscoring record for the group stage – four teenagers featured and Tuchel was so delighted with the result that he ordered pizza and chips for everyone.

The team remain a work in progress but are blessed with some outstanding individuals. Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang continues to thrive, scoring 32 goals in 36 appearances this season.

The increasingly influential Julian Weigl sets the tempo at the base of the Dortmund midfield. Further forward Ousmane Dembélé, a prodigiously talented 19-year-old winger signed from Rennes last summer, has been an instant success.

Dembélé’s transfer is emblematic of the direction in which Dortmund are heading as they seek to make Signal Iduna Park the first port of call for the most promising youngsters in Europe.

Mahmoud Dahoud, who was a target for Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City, is next in line after agreeing to join from Borussia Mönchengladbach in the summer. Tuchel pushed hard for Dahoud as well as Omer Toprak, the Turkish international who will arrive from Bayer Leverkusen at the end of the season, and the club’s backing on those two deals could be interpreted as a sign that he retains their full support.

Not that Tuchel is the sort of man to spend time wondering what may happen in the future. He has never mapped out a career plan and one of the things that meditation taught him is the importance of not wasting valuable energy by cluttering his mind.

Indeed, Tuchel’s sole focus right now is on putting all his effort into trying to succeed at Dortmund, a job that was a million miles from his mind when he was working as a waiter in Stuttgart and realising there was life beyond being a professional footballer.