In-profile: Ralf Rangnick, the man who could be England's new king

With Sam Allardyce gone and Gareth Southgate’s time at the helm of the England national team likely to have a limited life-span, another new leader of Wayne Rooney, Harry Kane and Co. is required.

The hope is that, this time, the new manager may even make it to two games in charge, and Ralf Rangnick is one of the names most heavily linked with the job after it emerged he had been interviewed over the summer prior to Allardyce’s appointment.

The 58-year-old German is now the Sporting Director at RB Leipzig, in the top half of the Bundesliga having been in the regional leagues—the fourth tier—as recently as 2013/14. Just prior to that campaign, Rangnick started work with the RB brand, functioning in the same role for RB Salzburg as well as Leipzig, before halting his duties with the Austrian side last year.

While his job now is overseeing the entirety of the sporting side of the club, he has previously been head coach in his own right at a host of teams and briefly performed the role for Leipzig to aid the promotion charge of 14/15.

Taking a team from the depths of German football toward the top is nothing new for Rangnick; it was he who performed similar minor miracles with Hoffenheim in the late 2000s, taking them from Regionalliga to Bundesliga with successive promotions. That Hoffenheim side contained the likes of Demba Ba, Roberto Firmino and Gylfi Sigurdsson along the way, with Rangnick famed for signing young players and encouraging a fast-paced, offensive style of play.

After leaving Hoffenheim in 2011, he was linked with an immediate move to the Premier League and Liverpool, who had just dispensed with Roy Hodgson. The move didn’t materialise, but Rangnick’s career has been fascinatingly linked to Hodgson’s own one since then; when Hodgson left West Bromwich Albion, Dan Ashworth almost appointed Rangnick as his successor and it is Ashworth as the FA’s technical director who initiated talks with the German about succeeding Hodgson for England, too.

Rangnick has long been regarded as an impressive and intelligent football man in his homeland, devoting himself utterly to whichever job he has been involved in. The ‘project’ work of Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig differ greatly to his stints at Schalke and Hannover, yet even at those clubs he enjoyed a measure of success. With S04, Rangnick finished runner-up in both league and cup to Bayern Munich, but was sacked by Christmas the following season.

The perception of Rangnick having a plan, a mode of playing the game, is undoubtedly one which appeals to the FA. For so long there has been irritation at England not having a particular style that even Allardyce’s approach was hailed in some quarters as being a clear path for the team to follow, an opportunity for progression and stability.

Looking to younger players—energetic, willing to learn and capable of both attacking and defending at speed—has always been a hallmark of Rangnick’s best sides and the youth talent at England’s disposal is again ready to be shaped. Marcus Rashford, Dele Alli, Raheem Sterling, Ross Barkley; those players and more are expected to make up the bulk of the team over upcoming tournaments, and a manager who trusts youth as much as experience has to be a big factor for the FA.

It’s perhaps also worth noting that Rangnick tried to appoint Thomas Tuchel as Leipzig’s head coach while the now-Borussia Dortmund boss was still at Mainz. That’s the mindset Rangnick demands: a forward-thinking man for a forward-thinking team.

It’s not to say he’s a perfect candidate, of course, who ticks every box.

If that were the case, his lack of Englishness would surely not have seen him overlooked last time out, with Allardyce hardly a must-have option himself at the time. Rangnick’s comparative absence of management at the very highest level has been cited by some as proof that his methods are lacking, yet it doesn’t appear to have prevented others from being appointed to the job of managing England.

Nor is Rangnick a completely clean character. While perhaps not affiliated with the nefarious type of talk which saw the last England manager dethroned, he simply upped sticks and left Hoffenheim after four years of progress when a player was sold without his knowledge.

The working relationship may have been eroded along the way beforehand, but the breaking point was clear and unflinching for Rangnick.

His current work at RB Leipzig is a point of contention for some in the country, too; dubbed the most hated team in Germany, they have eschewed the usual methods of running a side to spend huge money on players, financed by their notorious backers rather than through earnings, and have a tiny fan-owned portion of the club compared to most other outfits. It all sounds commonplace to Premier League-based supporters, but in Germany it’s an almost heretical way of functioning.

Speaking of heresy, a German in charge of England’s football team might be seen as the ultimate sporting submission in some quarters, perhaps an inconceivable idea a decade or two back given the on-pitch rivalry at times between the two nations.

Rangnick as a candidate to take over managing post-Hodgson has frequently been an interesting and exciting possibility, a total departure of style and tempo in a best-case scenario, but Rangnick as the actual appointment has never quite worked out. Perhaps it’ll be a case of third time lucky.