It was when Ralf Rangnick came up against Manchester United in a Champions League semi-final for Schalke 10 years ago that he revealed his sensitivity about the tag he has carried around during a 38-year career in management.
On the eve of that first leg in Gelsenkirchen he was reminded of his nickname ‘The Professor’, which he had borne since the day he went on national TV in 1998 with a whiteboard to introduce the German nation to the notion of ‘pressing’ and the flat back four.
The reminder rankled with him. He said it was demeaning. But United could certainly use something more professorial after three years in which Ole Gunnar Solskjaer did not appear to have any strategic or tactical method at all.
Ralf Ragnick (left) was reminded of his nickname 'The Professor' when his side played Man Utd
Sacked boss Ole Gunnar Solskjaer did not appear to have any strategic or tactical method at all
Rangnick, an Anglophile since a year studying at Sussex University as a 21-year-old, worked as an intern at Arsenal and considers Arsene Wenger a major influence.
But that strategising in a German television studio was all his own work. He was the trailblazer of the country’s pressing game and has translated it to clubs great and small, to hugely successful effect.
It was Rangnick, before Jurgen Klopp, who developed an obsession with his players’ reaction times in training. It was Rangnick who taught Klopp what effective pressing really looks like when his newly promoted Hoffenheim side defeated the current Liverpool manager’s Dortmund 4-1 in September 2008.
He worked as an intern at Arsenal and considers Arsene Wenger (pictured) a major influence
‘We need to get to where they are now,’ a devastated Klopp said in the aftermath of that hammering. ‘Tactical behaviour is not like riding a bike, unfortunately. You have to practise again and again.’
Rangnick seems to have been something of a mentor to Klopp, who rang him for advice before signing his first managerial contract at Mainz in 2001.
The two appeared together on TV the following year to deliver a searing analysis of why the German national team were failing. It proved visionary.
The relationship between these two progressive, prodigious Germans makes for a fascinating sub-plot when United travel to Anfield on March 19. But the big question about the months before then is how many of his own ideas and systems Rangnick will actually be able to bring.
The 63-year-old was so wedded to work-rate and pressing at Schalke that he banned the back-pass in training and stipulated a maximum of two touches on the ball.
Rangnick (left) seems to have been something of a mentor to Liverpool's Jurgen Klopp (right)
But United’s current
