On Wednesday night, as Tottenham take on RB Leipzig, José Mourinho might look across at the opposing bench and recognise something very familiar. In Julian Nagelsmann, the coach of RB Leipzig, he will see a driven man who desperately wanted to be a footballer but whose career ended prematurely, somebody who quit a university business course to focus on sport, somebody who from a remarkably early age has been marked out as one of the brightest coaches of their generation.
He will see, in other words, a version of his younger self. Tim Wiese, the wrestler and former goalkeeper, even nicknamed Nagelsmann "Mini-Mourinho" during his time as assistant coach at Hoffenheim. And perhaps in that Mourinho will feel a pang of mortality. At 32, Nagelsmann is 25 years younger: he is the future, while Mourinho is repeatedly battling suggestions he may be the past.
Football at its highest level is now dominated by the German school of hard pressing and rapid transitions, of which Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool is the supreme example. One of the pioneers of that style was Ralf Rangnick, who – after spells at Stuttgart, Schalke and Hoffenheim and two stints as Leipzig manager – is now the head of sport and development at Red Bull. In an interview with the Blizzard, he identified four principles to guide how Red Bull sides should play.
At Hoffenheim, we did research and showed the likelihood of scoring is within eight seconds of winning back the ball
“One, add maximum possibility to the team and act, don’t react. So you need to dictate the game with and without the ball, not through individuals. Two, use numerical superiority and let the ball run directly whenever possible, with no unnecessary individual action and with no fouls. Three, use transitions, switch quickly. Try to win back the ball within five seconds. After winning the ball back, play quickly straight away, play direct and vertically towards the goal, surprise the disorganised opponent to get into the area and shoot within 10 seconds of winning the ball back.
‘Countdown clock’
“At Hoffenheim, we did research and showed the likelihood of scoring is within eight seconds of winning back the ball. In training we have a countdown clock and the target is to score within 10 seconds. Jürgen Klopp has said the best playmaker is ‘perfect counterpressing’. So four, the more a team sprints faster to win back the ball, the greater the likelihood they will score a goal once they have won it back quickly.”
Before appointing Nagelsmann, who to an extent was building on the foundations he had left at Hoffenheim, Rangnick described him as "the greatest managerial talent in Germany". Certainly, he is one of the most forward-thinking, benefiting from the work done by the likes of Wolfgang Frank and Volker Finke to normalise pressing. That battle is won and Germany has moved from being a country that believed football was all about individual battles to be at the forefront of developing pressing. That in itself would distance Nagelsmann from Mourinho who, despite being formed as a coach amid the post-Cruyffian pressing game of late-1990s Barcelona, seemed to decide around the time he was overlooked for the Barça job in 2008 that his future would be a low block and reactivity – as though to emphasise his difference from the club that, as he saw it, had rejected him. But it is more than that.
A lot of playing for Nagelsmann involves memory. Everything is done with a specific purpose in mind
In his first two European campaigns, Nagelsmann's Hoffenheim looked a little naive, winning just one of 14 games. He has admitted he made too many changes between Bundesliga and Europe, leading to confusion, and also that he had been too offensive. As he looks to balance his thinking, Nagelsmann has acknowledged the importance of Klopp at Liverpool as a model, explaining how he wants his side also to become less reliant on counterattacking and to learn how to control games.
Broadbrush strategy
But that’s just the broadbrush strategy. There are also precise adjustments for individual games which, as the winger Ademola Lookman, who joined Leipzig from Everton on a permanent basis last summer, has said, means that a lot of playing for Nagelsmann involves memory. Everything is done with a specific purpose in mind.
"He always has a thought about everything," the winger Emil Forsberg explained. "What you have to do with the ball, if I take the ball here, what can I do then, and how you have to move when he has the ball – you just have to do it. It will appear and you'll kind of get a lightbulb in your head like, 'Ah, okay, so if I do that, that will open up and I can play that pass or I can play that pass.' That's what I like about the drills, that you always have something behind it."
While the holistic approach sounds a lot like Mourinho’s theories of periodisation, the big difference is that Mourinho, believing football to be essentially random, considers programmed moves too unreliable to be worthwhile and prefers to try to generate in his players a mindset that ensures they make the “right” – as he would see it – decision in any given circumstance.
And that, as much as his insistence on the low block, is what separates Mourinho from those who have come after. The old tricks performed well can still prevail, and nobody, least of all Nagelsmann, would pretend he is the finished product.
But this feels like a battle of two eras, one thrusting and innovative, the other familiar and possibly moribund.
– Guardian
