Nothing is standing in
the way of Hoffenheim "moving on" more than the myth of Ralf
Rangnick. It's time to put it to rest.
Rangnick stormed out on
Hoffenheim on January 1, 2011 after 4 1/2 years as head coach, 2 1/2 in the top
Bundesliga. He abandoned a hand-picked young international team and callously
left them scared and uncertain. He convinced his assistant coach to quit as
well, leaving the club without an experienced interim trainer and impacting the
career of the coach. It's quite possible he even implicitly, if not explicitly,
encouraged players to leave the club. But self-righteousness was in abundance.
Perhaps it was that which
allowed him with a clear conscience to collect a further €1M in salary to the
end of the season. Not many employees who quit without notice, storm out of
their job, and leave their employer in such dire straits continue to get paid,
regardless of their previous contribution to the enterprise. Rangnick was.
Apparently he wasn't principled enough to walk out on his salary,
just to walk out on his team.
The event that sparked
the crisis: The club owner along with the manager had sold a young star player
with immediate effect but without telling Rangnick. As part of the exchange,
they had negotiated the loan of another young player who to this day is
considered more talented than the sold player. It's interesting to note
that a young German-speaking Austrian player was taking the place of a young
Brazilian player.
The Hoffenheim player
wanted desperately to leave; an extraordinarily lucrative offer from the most
successful club in Germany with an opportunity to play immediately may never
have come again. He and his agent, a close friend of the owner, appealed
directly to the club owner to let him go.
Whether or not Rangnick
should have been informed about the player negotiation which sparked his
departure is debatable and had a lot to do with his personality and the extent
to which the relationship with the owner had already deteriorated. The club
owner had been in conflict with Rangnick for some time over budget and player
transfers.
Rangnick's incoming
transfers were notably expensive, far above true market value and, despite an
expensive extensive scouting staff, far too often flops. Outgoing transfers were
usually loans not sales, rarely, if ever, recouping the inflated purchase price
or even salary. Hoffenheim became renowned for generous salaries and profligate
policies and a lot of it was thanks to Ralf Rangnick.
As long as he was
successful, the purse strings had always been wide open for him and he had been
allowed to call all the shots. But the club was bleeding money, the owner's
money, and it was spinning its wheels in the middle to lower half of the
standings. Without the owner's money, the club would not have survived
because it did not conform to standard business practices regarding income and
expenses and, most importantly, placed the club in jeopardy regarding
"Fair Play" rules which govern international play.
There are those Rangnick
apologists who say that his previous manager was responsible. Certainly he paid
with his head months before Rangnick quit, which was a clear indication that
the conflict between owner and management over expenditures was escalating and
reaching intolerable levels.
However, it's hard to believe that
the manager was not following Rangnick's explicit instructions regarding player
acquisitions and it was also obvious that during that time Rangnick was the one
with more political clout in the organization and, just as importantly, in the
media. The firing and the installation of a manager closer to the owner than to
Rangnick was a clear signal that spending policies had to change and that the
reins were being taken out of Rangnick's hands. Tension was already high.
Rangnick had to have
known that something was coming. He probably even knew that there was an offer
on the table. But had he known the deal was about to close, subsequent behavior
leads one to believe that he likely would have turned immediately to the media
and engaged in a high profile, drawn out, embarrassing public battle with the
club owner in order to use public opinion to quash it, which probably would
have been more harmful to Hoffenheim in the long run than what did transpire.
Ralf Rangnick was not about to be dictated to and the club owner was not about
to let club finances deteriorate further. A collision course with unsurprising
consequences for Rangnick.
Rangnick had basically
bought his way into the top Bundesliga or, at the very least, allowed his way to
be bought. Hoffenheim reached the top league not least by spending record
amounts on new players while in the lower leagues. There has never been
anything like it since. He was perfectly happy to have players bought for
him wherever they could be found and at whatever price. Contrary to a central
aspect of the myth, most of the purchased key players and future stars were
foreign. Rangnick had no particular preference for German players.
Rangnick was also known
to be arrogant and prickly. While he did establish a style of play with
Hoffenheim that was exciting and new for the Bundesliga, he often condescended
to explain football to other German professionals, in private and in public,
which earned him the sarcastic nickname "the Professor". He rarely
brooked any opposition and, although his tenure at Hoffenheim was marked by a
shocking lack of discipline among players, he didn't shy away from punishing or
even banning those whom he considered insolent. He was not altogether the
beneficent coach that he is sometimes depicted as being.
Yes, Rangnick was gone
around. But the way he left Hoffenheim was irresponsible, childish and
unprofessional. He was not the first coach to have a star player sold from
under him and he won't be the last. But he was the most successful in promoting
himself as the victim.
His impact on Hoffenheim
in the media continues to this day. Probably no former Bundesliga coach is
interviewed for comments about their former team as much as Ralf Rangnick about
Hoffenheim. It's a media game that he knows well and plays his part in
cultivating. It effectively prevents any other coach from establishing a
defining role in Hoffenheim.
As to the popular,
romantic "we only take young German players from the region" part of
the Hoffenheim myth, Rangnick (and his fans) couldn't have cared less if those
were Germans or Brazilians or Croatians or Ghanians playing his style of
football out there, just as long as they were successful and established him as
a certain kind of coach.
It's hard to name one
young German player that Ralf Rangnick discovered and groomed because all of
his young German players he poached from elsewhere, primarily from Stuttgart,
which may have been one reason the atmosphere between the clubs was poisoned.
But those players were definitely not the whole team. In fact, all the biggest
stars in Hoffenheim, and especially those who went on to successful careers
elsewhere, were foreign.
How Rangnick came to be
associated with the Hoffenheim idea of cultivating young German football talent
is a mystery because Hoffenheim's world-famous and very successful youth
academy really had nothing to do with him. There are highly competent
individuals in Hoffenheim who did conceive it, establish it, organize it, build
it, and promote it -- but Rangnick was not one of them. And in fact, the
concept originated in another club in the region, SV Waldhof, which
Hoffenheim's owner has also supported financially.
So when Rangnick appears
in the media, as he does in times of crisis like recently, and pronounces that
Hoffenheim has lost its way, it's hard to tell exactly what he's talking about
because the "Hoffenheim way", if that means promoting young German
talent, is something he never really embodied.
Some would say it's a
meme that caught on because it appeals to a small town mentality and
legitimizes anti-foreigner instincts but is unrealistic in the modern
international football world. Furthermore, it's true that it's a
long-term approach and is unlikely to yield results short-term. Even Freiburg,
who is truer to the philosophy than Hoffenheim ever was, finds it necessary to
acquire foreign players.
