“The Revolution wasn’t only televised, it was broadcast live.” This is how Uli Hesse introduces new Manchester United manager Ralf Rangnick in his book Tor! The Story of German Football. It is a good way of thinking about the former Schalke and RB Leipzig boss, and as with any revolutionary, he was initially met with scepticism, scorn and savagery by the establishment he planned on usurping. After all, the highlight of Rangnick’s playing career might well have been turning out for Southwick in Sussex County League while he studied in Brighton. Who’s laughing now?
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The televised revolution to which Hesse refers was a night in the late 1990s, when Rangnick appeared on German football show Das Aktuelle Sportstudio while he was impressing as manager of Bundesliga 2 side Ulm. The small, unfancied side were making waves in German football for what was seen as their innovative approach of extreme, organised, mass counter-pressing. Jurgen Klopp has become the poster boy for this system, but Rangnick was developing it some thirty years ago, a decade even before he was asked to explain it on German television.
Rangnick’s ideas were built on those of the legendary Ukrainian Valeriy Lobanovskyi, who had taken his Dynamo Kyiv side to Germany for a training camp, and played against tiny village side Viktoria Backnang. Their player-manager was the unknown Rangnick, who saw his players run so ragged by the Ukrainians that at one point he stopped to count the players on the pitch, convinced that to achieve such complete coverage of the pitch Dynamo must have snuck on a couple of extras. They hadn’t, and inspiration struck the German. Gegenpressing had just been conceived. It would take a little longer to be born, and decades to mature, by which point Rangnick had reached the top of German football with Schalke, where he chose to go back down for the interesting project being put together by Red Bull.
How does this all relate to his upcoming tenure at Old Trafford? Clearly he will impose a high-pressing, progressive system on the players, who have been woefully lacking in preparation under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. He will bring the same Heavy Metal Football to Manchester as Klopp has to Liverpool. But his influence will extend further than simply a coherent, efficient system of play for his players, if he takes up the 2 year contract on offer as a Sporting Director. Given enough time and freedom, he will change Manchester United to their core. It is an appointment that in many ways seems completely at odds with what the Glazers have done before.
In Germany, Rangnick was one of a group of revolutionary coaches in the early 1990s who saw a different way for German football. All had similar aims and ideas, and all saw the value of a team being more than the sum of its players. That is a philosophy that has been lacking at Old Trafford since 2013. Another of those coaches, Volker Finke, kept Freiburg at the top table for many years with similar structural philosophies, although he tried every trick in the book to achieve, rather than wedding himself to one tactical system. Regardless, he described Germany as having been too committed to “hero football”, the idea that big name players could dictate and dominate games regardless of the system. In Britain we have known it by its Spanish incarnation, the Galactico policy.
United’s recent signings make it difficult to argue that they are not largely following the same policy. Donny van der Beek was a panicked signing that has never quite fitted into the side under Solskjaer. £50m for Aaron Wan-Bissaka, £80m for Harry Maguire, £70m for Jadon Sancho. The free transfers of Raphael Varane, Edinson Cavani, and of course Cristiano Ronaldo look like good business, but their wages and their presence in the squad have arguably been more costly than beneficial. Only Bruno Fernandes can really be called a success, out of Solskjaer’s signings. You might be able to argue that he is the only successful signing since Ferguson left the club, with Luke Shaw and Paul Pogba’s form inconsistent, although admittedly better more recently. For the biggest club in the world, that’s not good enough.
What Finke, Rangnick, and the rest of that group of German coaches espoused instead is “concept football”, where players are signed not for their name, but for the way they fit into the system. Under Rangnick, it is almost impossible to imagine the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo for example. The Portuguese has adapted his game as he aged to become one of the most dangerous centre forwards in the world, but in doing so he doesn’t fit the high-pressing system that Rangnick pioneered, and that most elite clubs have adopted. Especially with Cavani already at the club, his signing was made for his name and reputation, and Rangnick would probably have made a different choice.
The other element to Rangnick’s transfer policy is youth. As he built the Red Bull project in Austria and Germany (and make no mistake, as manager and then as sporting director, it was him that built the Red Bull project), a strict policy was imposed of trying not to sign players over 24, and definitely not signing players over 27. He turned down the chance to sign a Championship Jamie Vardy for that very reason. It’s less that they need to have a value to be sold on – RB Leipzig are one of the richest teams in Germany and don’t need to rely on player sales to succeed – and more to do with their ability and willingness to adapt to the Rangnick system. Again, this would almost certainly have prevented the signing of Cristiano Ronaldo this summer.
So what should United fans expect in the next six months, and then the years that follow.
Short term is what they have been crying out for all season – organisation, teamwork, and commitment. It may be too big an ask to improve them to the standard of Liverpool in just six months, but they absolutely won’t go into games unprepared, and any player giving less than 110% will be exposed very quickly. Because he only has a short-term contract, Rangnick is unlikely to care about player reputations or the prices paid for them, so there will be nowhere to hide for anyone, regardless of what they might have done in the past. They will probably be dropped at the first sign that they lack to commitment to his ideas, and somebody more willing brought in.
Longer term is more significant. Given the chance to adapt the recruitment structure at United to his own beliefs – and given his success, who would argue against him? – the “hero football” will come to an end. That’s not to say that he won’t recommend big signings anymore, but they will be younger, more adaptable and, crucially, their reputation and personalities won’t be allowed to affect the team. That means no more Cristiano Ronaldos. For all the fanfare around marquee signings, isn’t that a price worth paying for a chance at success?
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