How Ralf Rangnick turned Austria into a high-pressing machine - and what it says about Man Utd

Perhaps Ralf Rangnick’s high-intensity, collectivist style of pressing football was never going to work at Manchester United. Over the course of his brief and unsuccessful tenure as interim head coach at Old Trafford, he struggled to impart the principles of his aggressive tactical style on a dressing room that seemed disinterested – but his work with the Austrian national team is starting to show United fans what might have been had his ideas taken root.

Having topped a group which included both France and the Netherlands, Rangnick’s Austria now continue their Euro 2024 campaign against Turkey in Leipzig on Tuesday night, a stadium that the manager know very well. He had two spells as RB Leizpig manager and was, between 2012 and 2020, a director for the Red Bull group as a whole.

In that role, he ensured that his philosophy – the aggressive, structured high pressing system that was directly emulated by Jürgen Klopp and which influenced Thomas Tuchel, Julian Nagelsmann and countless other coaches in Germany – was imparted to generations of new talent coming through in Leipzig, Salzburg and in other teams around the world that came under the Red Bull umbrella. Now that he has taken over the Austrian team, he is enjoying some of the fruits of that work.

It is, perhaps, possible to exaggerate the direct influence of Rangnick on the development of his current squad. Of the 16 players that got onto the pitch as starters or substitutes in the hugely impressive 3-2 win over the Netherlands, just six had spent time at a Red Bull club learning Rangnick’s methods. But his fingerprints are all over this team anyway – their compact, organised high press has proven immensely challenging for theoretically stronger sides to handle.

Few other international teams seem able to press with such discipline and intensity. There are numerous reasons why other managers find it hard to make a high press work at this level – but the increasing complexity of pressing systems is an important factor. Since the concept of gegenpressing was unleashed on the footballing world, it has become far more structured and codified than it once was.

Even looking at Klopp’s Liverpool teams over recent years, the difference is palpable. When he first arrived at Anfield, the pressing system was all the time, all over the pitch. Now, it’s more refined – they rarely double up on central defenders, for instance, because they can pass in any direction and should always have an option, especially in an age when teams train their players to be press resistant. Instead, they trigger the press hard when the ball goes out wide, because the opposing player only has half a pitch to aim their next pass at and less room to dribble, giving them fewer ways out.

Teams up and down professional football now view pressing in a similar way – they all have different trigger points, different base formations, different levels of intensity in different areas of the pitch. For an international manager, corralling a squad of players who operate under different systems into a cohesive pressing unit in the space of a couple of weeks is either too hard or too low-reward to be worth the effort. But Rangnick, who has been the high priest of the high press since watching the Dynamo Kyiv teams of the 1980s, has succeeded where so few others do - as Marcel Sabitzer put it: “You can see a clear development since the coach joined the team. Before we were a bit passive... [Now] everyone knows when we lose the ball we have to switch and hunt down the ball.”

Fitness may be a factor too. When England manager Gareth Southgate claimed his teams weren’t fit enough to adopt a high press earlier in the tournament, there was a certain degree of sneering – but he may also have a point when one considers how many minutes his charges have played. Austria’s 10 outfield players for the Netherlands game had played, on average, 31.2 games during the 2023/24 season, mostly in the less congested German and Austrian Bundesligas. England’s outfielders in their final group stage game had played an average of 43.1 matches – a huge difference.

Perhaps the biggest factor, however, is his ability to bring a sense of togetherness to his team. Austria’s players have spoken warmly about their coach and their experience of his reign so far, and there is a distinctly collegiate atmosphere few other national sides mimic so explicitly. It’s maybe instructive that two days before the start of the tournament, when most teams were stepping up training regimens and honing fine details, Rangnick paid to take the entire squad to a Rod Stewart concert. Not long after, they went sailing through their group.

He seems to have been able to inculcate a sense of togetherness into a squad whose system relies on effective teamwork – it may be indicative that David Alaba, Austria’s star player, has still travelled with the team as a “non-playing captain” despite being ruled out of the European Championship through injury. It may also serve to explain his failure at Manchester United that he has a very different group of players with Austria than he did at what appeared to be a divided, ego-laden Old Trafford.

Ahead of his final game in charge of United before Erik ten Hag took his place, Rangnick explained that he felt unable to install his typical pressing style due to a combination of fitness and having the wrong players – singling out Cristiano Ronaldo for some mild implicit criticism for being a player who didn’t have the right attitude out of possession. Ronaldo then hinted that Rangnick may have had a point by going on to sound off about his former manager in an interview with Piers Morgan.

Looked at through the lens of his successes with Austria, with the Red Bull group and in other postings in Germany (especially Hoffenheim) there is an implication that many of United’s recent issues can be pinned on the playing staff first and foremost. Whenever Rangnick has managed an apparently determined, driven and ego-free team, he has succeeded, often admirably. Given him superstars and he seems to struggle. That’s a weakness of Rangnick’s methods and man management style, perhaps, but it also means that when teams seem to react badly to him, it’s probably an indictment of what’s going on at their end as well.

Whatever went wrong at Manchester United, it doesn’t seem to apply at Euro 2024. Austria have been intense, impressive and have perhaps outworked every other team at the tournament so far – and Turkey will need to raise their game to get through their last 16 match on Tuesday evening.