Schalke v Manchester United: how Ralf Rangnick the 'fussball professor’ found a winning formula
The first time Ralf Rangnick took on English opposition he ended up in hospital.
Fussball professor: Schalke coach Ralf Rangwick will face Manchester United in the Champions League Photo: REUTERS
By Duncan White 11:00PM BST 23 Apr 2011
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As the head coach of Schalke, he will attempt to outwit Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson in the Champions League semi-final on Tuesday night, a far cry from his debut for Southwick while a student at Sussex University 30 years ago.
“In my first match I broke three ribs and perforated my lung,” Rangnick said. “I spent 3½ weeks in hospital in Chichester and took months to recover, so really I only played between January and May, so that limited my games.”
Not that limited games seem to be a problem for Rangnick. He has been in charge of Schalke for all of four weeks, having replaced the sacked Felix Magath back in mid March. Within a fortnight his side had stunned European champions Inter Milan with a 5-2 away win, and followed it up with a 2-1 win at home.
Now he has his sights set on United and the opportunity to make a name for himself in the country for which he has retained a lot of affection — despite the rough introduction he received on the playing fields of Sussex.
“I was 21 years old at the time, and I was studying English language and PE at university in Germany with the aim of becoming a school teacher,” he said. “My course involved spending a year abroad. I was a guest student at Sussex University, and lived with an English family in a home-stay in Brighton.
“Within four months my English was pretty fluent. I’d become part of the family. It was a wonderful time. I have always loved the English language and I don’t know where that comes from. As young as 10, I wrote an essay saying that I wanted to become an English teacher.”
In between his studies, Rangnick would indulge his passion for football. “I watched a game every week, either at Brighton where Alan Mullery was the manager and they were in the First Division, or up in London.
“The last match I saw during that year was the Cup final at Wembley, West Ham and Arsenal, because I was given a ticket by my Southwick team-mates.”
Having continued to play back in Germany — “somewhere between the second and third division standard” — and begun coaching amateur teams around Stuttgart, Rangnick decided to coach full-time, inspired by a felicitous meeting with one of the game’s greatest coaches.
“I was coaching at Backnang in 1984 when we played a friendly match against Valeriy Lobanovsky’s Dynamo Kiev. They had a winter training camp for a fortnight every year, based nearby, and we were the opponents on this occasion. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“I thought we must have at least three players less than them. I had to count to make sure that it was 11 versus 11.
“Their mobility and energy, and the way they’d been arranged to play was amazing, so I spoke to Valeriy and got an insight into his ideas.
“In Germany at that time, the convention was to play a 3-5-2 and sweeper system but I was open to new ideas and wanted to do things differently from then on.”
That enthusiasm for innovation earned him a degree of notoriety in 1998 when, having got Ulm promoted into the second division, he went on a popular football TV show and explained zonal marking and the flat back four using a magnetic board. He was ridiculed and given the nickname 'Fussball Professor’.
“In any other country, being called professor would be a compliment. I think we were a little ahead of our time. It was very unusual to speak openly about tactics on television at that time.
“It was very unusual to speak about a back four, because only two or three German clubs played with zonal marking and a back four. Having a young coach [he was then 40] explaining things wasn’t appreciated.
“In the same situation I wouldn’t do it again, now I know how sensitive the whole issue was.” At 52, Rangnick is no longer the maverick. He took that Ulm team into the Bundesliga and, after that had mixed times with Stuttgart, Hanover and Schalke. With all three he had an impressive first campaign but struggled in the second season.
After being sacked by Schalke in 2005 he dropped down into German regional football and took over ambitious Hoffenheim, leading them to successive promotions and, in their first season (2008-09) in the Bundesliga, had them top of the table going into the winter break (they ended seventh).
When he resigned from Hoffenheim earlier this year, after a dispute over the sale of one of his best players, Luis Gustavo, to Bayern Munich, he became one of the most coveted coaches in European football. Schalke did not hang around.
Their appointment brought swift reward and now United stand between Rangnick and a return to Wembley 30 years since his mates from Southwick bought him that ticket as a goodbye treat.
“On top of two amazing performances against Inter Milan to get to this point, we now have to produce something like that again. We are the underdogs but if we play at our very best level, we can do well.”
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