The 65-year-old has achieved a lot in German football, but he is still missing a title with a big team. Now Rangnick is getting involved in the notoriously difficult environment in Munich.
How long may the thought of becoming coach of FC Bayern Munich have been slumbering in Ralf Rangnick’s mind? Rangnick has not revealed it yet, although usually well-informed circles want to know that it is almost certain that the 65-year-old Swabian will take over Bayern next season – as the successor to Thomas Tuchel, who is leaving early at the end of the season. Rangnick himself also has a mandate to complete beforehand: he will look after Austria’s national team at the European Championships in Germany.
At first glance, it seems like a logical decision: Rangnick is no stranger to German football; he can even be described as one of the most important coaches of the last few decades. Although he never won a championship, he knew how to create structures in two places with which a club – each heavily financed by a patron – was lifted from an amateur league into the top division.
Rangnick’s ideas brought Hoffenheim and Leipzig to the top
Ralf Rangnick is the mastermind behind the Bundesliga clubs Hoffenheim and Leipzig, and behind the great ambitions of the Red Bull Group in football, for which he worked after leaving Hoffenheim. An architect who doesn’t just pay attention to the moment, but – unlike in short-winded Munich – plans far in advance. But even though FC Bayern is considered a notoriously difficult environment, the prospect of being able to coach one of the very few clubs that deserve the title of world club in the final quarter of his career may have been attractive enough for him.
It’s a difficult assignment. The last few years in particular, the period after the departure of Uli Hoeness, the president, and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, the CEO, have led to erosion. The grandees intervened and threw out the leadership duo – Oliver Kahn and Hasan Salihamidzic – and gave themselves more say again. Rangnick, it was learned, was the candidate of former CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge; Bayern spoke at the same time with Julian Nagelsmann, Tuchel’s predecessor, who now coaches the German national team.
His contract extension in the German Football Association (DFB) was the final rejection of a return to Bayern, which for a moment lost communication sovereignty. Immediately after the news of Nagelsmann’s decision, a rumor suddenly spread that Bayern were in line for Zinedine Zidane – an all too transparent maneuver to steer the discussions away from Nagelsmann.
Now Bayern are faced with the signing of a man who can be seen as the prototype of many successful coaches of the generation after him. Rangnick did pioneering work by sensitizing the Germans to tactical subtleties as coach of SSV Ulm at the end of the 1990s: zonal marking instead of man-marking, a back four instead of libero. That sounded downright revolutionary at the time, even though it was already standard in other European countries. What the tactician Rangnick is still capable of could be seen in the game against one of his epigones: Julian Nagelsmann had little to counter his experienced colleague in the DFB team’s game against Austria, the Austrians won 2-0 in November.
Rangnick knows the risks in Munich
So now Bayern Munich. Rangnick is well aware of the risk he is taking in Munich, according to familiar circles. His predecessor Thomas Tuchel, who is certainly not inferior to Rangnick in terms of quality, had obviously misjudged this point: he did not face a team, but rather a collection of players with vested interests. This was always visible when one of the highly gifted people made a big impression in order to have better arguments in contract negotiations. The fact that Tuchel’s essential wishes were not fulfilled, such as the signing of a defensive midfielder, contributed to the failure of his mission in Munich.
The fact that a coach like Tuchel, who has achieved great international success, despairs of the Munich team does not have to mean a disadvantage for Rangnick. Rather, this has uncovered all sorts of deficits. It also put him in a favorable negotiating position. He may have taken certain ideas for granted, such as the choice of coaching team, and he may also insist on having a major influence on squad planning. That was exactly one of his strengths in Hoffenheim and also in Leipzig. The Munich team also has all sorts of players in their ranks who went through the Rangnick school: Joshua Kimmich, Dayot Upamecano and Konrad Laimer came to Munich via Leipzig.
Rangnick meets old acquaintances
In this respect, Rangnick meets old friends at FC Bayern who he values. Rangnick also knows the sports director, Christoph Freund, who managed to guide Erling Haaland to Salzburg from the Red Bull football empire and knows how he works. It’s different with Max Eberl, Bayern’s sports director, who is considered Uli Hoeness’s source and who left a rather gloomy impression in the current discussion about the club.
Eberl will have to deal with a very demanding coach. His ambition is probably all the greater because Rangnick is aware that his career has a flaw: he has never successfully coached a really big club. Rangnick did work at Manchester United on an interim basis (a very disrespectful statement from Cristiano Ronaldo about the German, according to which he was “not even a coach”), also comes from this time. But this job wasn’t meant to last.
In this respect, Rangnick has a unique opportunity at FC Bayern: the club’s financial resources are still generous, and the structures are by no means so dilapidated that nothing can be done with them. The only question is whether Bayern will give Rangnick enough leeway. He won’t want to give up his claim to being more than just a passing coach in Munich.