The German boss claims that not having his stars on hand may have lowered expectations enough to relax his side ahead of the Champions League opener.
It's hard to believe that missing three players with the quality of Neymar, Kylian Mbappe and Edinson Cavani could help a team win a match, but that's exactly the argument Thomas Tuchel made following Paris Saint-Germain's 3-0 mashing of Real Madrid on Wednesday.
Neymar was serving the first match of a two-game suspension, while Mbappe and Cavani both missed out through injury as the French side got their Champions League campaign off to a flying start.
And Tuchel claimed after the match that his missing stars may have done the rest of the players on his squad a major favour, relaxing the expectations and allowing them to play with a bit more freedom against Los Blancos.
"Maybe the absence of Cavani, Neymar and Mbappe helped the team," he said at his post-match press conference. "Maybe the pressure was less, because everybody was wondering how we could win without those three players.
"It can help because we weren't favourites without Neymar, Mbappe and Cavani. It could have taken some of the pressure off the players."