“I am burning to become a coach who is also successful internationally”, confessed Julian Nagelsmann on his arrival at RasenBallsport Leipzig, in August 2019. Moderate impatience, because the German tactician knows he is ahead of his journey time. In 2016, at the age of 28, taking the helm of Hoffenheim in 2016, he became the youngest coach in the Bundesliga. By driving the RB, where he arrived in July 2019, in the quarter-finals of the Champions League he broke another record of precocity: never a coach of this age had reached this stage of the most prestigious European competition. This Thursday, at 32 years and 7 months, he goes on fire against Atlético Madrid, trained by this old rogue of Diego Simeone, eighteen years older in civil status, and ten more in the profession.
This quarter-final is also a first for Leipzig, whose young history and ambitions coincide with those of Nagelsmann. You just have to compare their trajectories. Founded in 2009 by Red Bull, the club was catapulted into the Bundesliga from the 2016-2017 financial year, when Nagelsmann was just discovering the elite on the Hoffenheim bench. He could have done it long before, as a player, but a meniscus operation undermined his cartilage in 2008, and the risk of osteoarthritis in case of recurrence convinced him to stop everything, at only 20 years old. This nightmare is already far away when, a little more than a year after his arrival on the bench, the former central defender qualifies Hoffenheim for the first time in the Champions League.
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Suffice to say that when it was necessary to make a short-list of coaches to take over Leipzig last year, the name of Nagelsmann quickly flew. Astonishing fact: he initialed his contract the season preceding his arrival, in June 2018. He was then seen as the second stone of the Leipzig project launched by the Red Bull firm, which should see the club settle permanently in the football landscape. German. “It depends in part on us but not only, said Nagelsmann during an interview with the SID agency, at the opening of the championship. We have many young players, who do not yet speak German, who are discovering the city and the country. They must first acclimatize. We have a lot of talent in the team but we’ll see how long it will take to turn that talent into results. Basically, this club has the potential to win a title in the next three, four years. “
The main lines are drawn. And for this, Nagelsmann has indeed a team of young European hopefuls, with strong tricolor accents: Dayot Upamecano (21 years), Ibrahima Konaté (21 years), Nordi Mukiele (22 years), and the former Parisian Christopher Nkunku (22 years old), arrived in the offseason 2019. Not to mention the British Ademola Lookman (21 years old) and Ethan Ampadu (18 years old). And do not talk to him about inexperience, despite the average age of the group, the lowest of the 32 teams entered in C1 this season (22.7 years). “We often reduce experience to age, but it’s more a question of games played. At 22, Messi already had 300 Spanish La Liga games. The experience, it’s up to us to garner it “, defends Nagelsmann.
RBL’s excellent 2019-2020 year, once again on the Bundesliga podium behind the two ogres Bayern and Dortmund, speaks for itself. But if it had to be proven definitively, Leipzig did it in the double confrontation against Tottenham, in the knockout stages of the Champions League. Few saw the Saxony club release last year’s finalist, now under the orders of José Mourinho, a real reference in the field. The tactical duel was worth a look. He was quickly seen. Fast play, a big tempo and a superior collective in all compartments, the triptych allowed Leipzig to outclass Spurs (1-0; 3-0) without flinching. Surely at the origin of the masterpiece, this crucial decision, already tested at the start of the season by Nagelsmann: to replace the Austrian Marcel Sabitzer, a career attacking midfielder, just ahead of the three-way defense. His sense of the game combined with the quality of his raises, considerably modifies the midfield. Above all, his double during the first twenty minutes completes the qualification of his.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=12qNDZjQfvI
Drone and tactical innovation
These feats of arms do not justify everything. In reality, almost everything has already been won in training, Nagelsmann’s privileged playground. “The demands in the cognitive domain are more and more high and we can go even further in modern football. Guys need to be able to assess and sort through a lot of information under pressure and make decisions really fast. This is why it is important to over-solicit them in training ”, justifies the technician. A request for permanent daily involvement, to the point of only giving its pre-match composition in the very last moments before the warm-up.
To hear the entourage and the players, Nagelsmann is a field surgeon, able to autopsy every setback down to the smallest detail. Ditto in case of success, which he breaks down over the course of in-depth analyzes, requiring the full attention of his troops. Even if it means supporting new technologies. “If we want to analyze the whole game, it is useful to look at the terrain and the situations from above, which is why he uses drones, evokes his former protégé Leonardo Bittencourt to France Football. In particular to analyze the behavior of the opponent or the displacement of lines. We see much better like that. And as a player, we understand much more clearly. “ Bittencourt insists: “It is the 4.0 coach who brings all he can to shape the football of tomorrow.”
With the person concerned, this football of tomorrow is built around two slopes. One requires constant tactical innovation, which goes hand in hand with a solid understanding of the game required of players. Contrary to the philosophies of loyalty to a unique style, he advocates the flexibility of the game which must allow to evolve in any system. At least, the one who will best exploit the weaknesses of the opponent. There are no less than ten this season: defenses varying from 3 to 5, ditto in front with one, two, sometimes three attackers depending on the weekend. The most recurring – the 4-2-2-2 – has only been decided eight times. This is where the football IQ is essential. Especially since Nagelsmann loves to adjust his team block, often very high, sometimes very low (this is particularly the case against Bayern).
The other is built around 31 principles secretly enacted by the technician. Hard to list them – they don’t filter out of the locker room – but here’s one: “Forcing your opponent to make a bad pass, rather than trying to get the ball back in one-on-one situations because success is too random.” Cited in Football Hackers, by Christoph Biermann, Nagelsmann clarifies: “Our goal is to always take advantage of an interception to have an advantage of pace and speed over the opponent, who plays wide and wide.” Two-touch play and diagonal passing are among the other principles. These must allow more angles and depths, and are “The prerequisites of the zigzag game” de Leipzig.
RB Leipzig coach Julian Nagelsmann has laid down 31 playing principles including this one: “forcing your opponent to make a bad pass, rather than trying to get the ball back in one-on-one situations because success is too random “
Football Hackers / @chbiermann https://t.co/moTX98La6u– EspoirsduFootball ???? (@EspoirsduFoot) May 19, 2020
Difficult, too, to determine the source. But many of these postulates must be inspired by the styles of play advocated by Guardiola, Klopp, and Tuchel, of which Nagelsmann was at the same time the player, the pupil and the “scout” in Augsburg, between 2007 and 2008. However ‘ it happens: pressing – a lot of pressing – when the air is not in the feet, and players who throw themselves quickly by using the sides abundantly in the offensive phases to bring in the excess. The recipe works, at least at the front: in all competitions, his team has scored 10 more goals this season than in the previous one, playing 7 fewer games.
Small problem, of these 105 goals, 47 involved the prodigy Timo Werner… meanwhile exiled to Chelsea, and therefore absent in Lisbon this week. Nagelsmann’s challenge is straightforward. “It’s a good thing that we don’t have to play ten and that we can replace him”, he quipped, in an interview with the Spanish daily Brand. More seriously : “We will have to be creative and have control of the match, facing a European heavyweight of recent years. Diego Simeone has done a fantastic job and built a strong team that we will need to break through. I think I have developed my own style, we play the football that I want and enjoy. ”
Barça and Real too. In the summer of 2018, he was in discussions to succeed Zidane at the Merengues, but refused. For the moment, because still according to his words reported by Brand, Nagelsmann thought “That it was not yet the right time to go to Real Madrid. […] We agreed that we could speak again in the future if Real Madrid needed a coach… and if I am available. ”. This chopper match against Atlético might not be his last with RB Leipzig.
Romain Métairie
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