How Rangnick has made Austria genuine contenders

Austria have been the most impressive team from the Group Stages of Euro 2024. Ralf Rangnick's team finished top of their group and are into the knockout stages.

The German manager seems to have put his difficult spell at Manchester United behind him, so how has he transformed this Austrian team and how far can they go?

Ayo Akinwolere is joined by The Athletic’s Seb Stafford-Bloor, Mark Carey & Mark Critchley to discuss.

00:00:00 Intro
00:00:10 Don't be surprised by Austria
00:01:10 Austria’s football style
00:02:21 Ralf Rangnick as a head coach of Austria
00:04:43 Tactics & principles
00:10:30 Austria needed a modern coach
00:18:05 Austrian player ratings
00:19:44 Rangnick's time at Man United
00:26:21 This team doesn't have egos
00:28:59 Reshaping a country's mentality
00:30:27 Why he didn’t take the Bayern job
00:32:40 Outro

The Athletic Football Podcast is your essential guide to football's biggest stories, five times a week this season...

Follow The Athletic FC:

Follow Tifo Football:

Thumbnail: Marvin Ibo Guengoer - GES Sportfoto / Contributor / Getty Images Sport via Getty Images

#euro2024 #austria #rangnick

[aal]

So surreal to see my national team being talked about like this. As someome who has been in the stadium during the game when there was a sinkhole on the pitch it feels so insane that we beat the dutch.

Talking about "reshaping the mentality" I would like to share something which happened on austrian state television 2 years ago. We played a nations league game against france, we scored the first goal, France equalized in the 83rd minute and Ragnick was really mad in the post-game interview.

When the interviewer tried to calm him down by saying "After all we drew against the current world champions" Ralf responded with "Sorry but why after all! We were winning 1:0!". I think this was a small but very symbolic moment which shows how he changed our mentality

[AnitaPOE]

As an austrian you can't imagine how happy we are about what RR and the team are doing at the moment

[dannydkoith]

The british media with limited knowledge outside the premierleague crucified him for nothing. Wanted him to stay as a DoF. He knows ball if you follow him longer than his united stint. And I am a United fan

[junes_junesko]

I work in advertising and we shot a campaign with Rangnick a few months ago. In addition to him as the main actor, there were also a few extras from the lower leagues. During the breaks, Rangnick did nothing but talk to these no-name players. He even invited them to a training session in Vienna. This man is the embodiment of team spirit and authority.

[therealnucleus]

What I've hardly ever heard anybody talk about as a reason for the current success is the chemistry within this Austrian team. Both among the players and between the trainer team and the players. Ragnick has actually said he loves the team. He didn't say like or really like, he explicitly said love. If you look at the press conference before the Netherlands game where he and Arnautovic were basically joking for 30mins straight but simultaneously were expressing deep respect for each other that's an atmosphere that probably can't get any better for a sports team.

[thejulinks]

On Ralf Rangnick and Marko Arnautovic:

Marko has been very candid, that his first thought when Ralf Rangnick was appointed was "Well, that's my career in the NT over". However, before the first international break Ralf Rangnick called him and told Arnautovic his plans in detail and how he absolutely wanted to keep working with him. Ralf Rangnick also very quickly recognised how important "Nautl" is for our team chemistry and atmosphere and they two bonded over some very deep talk about fatherhood and family. The final piece of the puzzle that absolutely solidified the great relation Rangnick and Arnautovic have was our friendly against Italy on November 20th 2022. Arnautovic without exaggeration showed a world class performance, not only when attacking but also by playing great game against the ball and choosing very smart moments to press to the best of his ability. Rangnick has been a fan of his ever since and we're so lucky that Marko is perfectly healthy for the first time in ages just in time for the Euros.

[EarthXer-Earthcrosser]

Guys, I'm from Austria, Vienna and this has been the most correct and sophisticated analysis of our team I came across so far. Thank you! The only thing that maybe was a bit overlooked is the fact that Rangnick pretty much invented the RB high pressing style, and the core of the Austrian team either played at Salzburg and/or Leipzig. The rest of the team (except Arnautovic) is filled up with players that would fit this philosophy easily. It should not have been a surprise that our team plays a bit more like a club because of this.
The main reason why people did get upset with Franco Fodas approach was because we already knew we had a team who could play Rangnick football, but Foda would not utilize it and played rather old-fashioned counter football.

[ssheldon]

Very happy for RR, vindication for what the United players did to him.

[samlanganke]

Arnautovic works because he thought he had to leave when Rannick came in. He said that himself: He tought he was too old and too slow for Rangnicks football style. But Rangnick didn't want him to leave and gave him a new task and purpose. And of course he said to him that he couldn't do it without him. Marko needs that for his Ego. Rangnick is also very good psychologically.

[markaurelius]

one of the first things he did was make a list with talented austrian young players and invited them to some trainings and see their potential and talk to them what they need to improve to join the first squad... no other austrian coach ever did that

[Ranthedom]

Great episode, I'm impressed how much knowledge you guys have about our small country's national team. Very interesting and refreshing to hear opinions from experts who are not from Austria / Germany.

[etetepete]

You could say it all started with David Alaba. He joined the team when he was 17 years old, bringing extrem levels of professionalism from Bayer Munich to the national team. He also won the Champions league very early in his career, so the whole team picked up on that mentality. Even Arnautovic became much more professional because of that. Players started evolving, joining more and more international club teams, giving us a bigger and bigger pool to choose from. Of course at the heart of it was RedBull, but the whole league tactically advanced with this new competition.

Nowadays ther are also many successfull austrian coaches in international clubs, like Hasenhüttel, Hütter, Stöger and Oliver Glasner.

Since we never had many dribbling magicians in our ranks, we had to focus on what we could compete with on an international level and thats athletics and tactics.

This whole process had many years in the making and it's not over. There's many ressources Austrian football can draw from today, talented young players, modernized club tactics and decent coaches.

Rangnick took over the national team as one of it's main architects from his time at RedBull.
He's putting a team into overdrive, that started evolving more than a decade ago.


No matter how this Euro's going, we'll be back for the World Cup, and the tournaments to follow.

[TheNightMammoth]

I'm not going to rewrite history and say all United fans were fully behind him during his stint but I think the sentiment immediately after and especially now is that he was brought in to an impossible situation and he should have been allowed to continue as the Director of Football as planned. He sussed out United's problems and wanted to fix them. He was the first person in a while to say, openly, that the whole club needed to be rebuilt. The Glazers spoilt it, as they didn't want to give someone that kind of power. I hope that as the years go on it stops being a sort of black mark against him in the UK.

[jadmantoura]

It’s almost as if Ralf Rangnick wasn’t the problem at Manchester United 🤷🏻‍♂️

[andybuchanan]

Ayo is such a fantastic presenter. Exhudes passion and has a very likeable personality, clearly does a lot of research to get ready for these shows as well. A joy to watch.

[noname-pzkb]

I have been impressed with the depth pf this squad. Don’t forget they are missing Alaba and X. Schlager. However, the defense has played in three different formations in the group stage and has done extremely well.

The fact that Rangnick was even hired by the Austrian federation is nothing short of a miracle. They forced in Foda after Koller and the team fell apart again.

I hope that now everyone understands how much of a difference a good manager has on the team!

[circle]

I remembered Austria from the last Euros
They were good then and I felt they had something special
Rangnick's cooking something with Austria.

[scottipippen]

As a Bayern supporter, i couldn`t be happier for Ralf and for Austria. Glad, he stayed with Austria, avoided the fading glamour and chaos of current Bayern. It would have been the same situation as with Manu. Stubborn and narcissistic characters all over the place, who can`t give up power and controll, making it impossible to rebuild the club. I am rooting for Austria to really go deep, maybe even reach the final. Which is not a reach, but very possible.

I don`t really expect Germany to go that far, since we will have to play spain on the way to the final. But a Ralf vs Julian/Austria vs Germany battle in the final, would be epic to watch, to say the least..

By the way: great podcast, guys! Saw it for the first time today, immediately subscribed to the channel.

[Hungry-Goat]

People focus so much on Austria’s system and say that they lack quality but even quality-wise they are massively underrated.

Austria’s center back Kevin Danso is absolute world class and by that I mean he’s one of the very best CBs in the world right now. So are their right back Posch and their left back Mwene. Their sweeper Seiwald is an absolute monster and if you watch him closely, if you watched him against Kanté, there wasn’t much between them. Baumgartner and Sabitzer have also grown to be world class CAMs and I’m not exaggerating. Laimer is only getting better as well. Sure, the system is really effective but they also have a lot of individual quality, which lots of people overlook.

[AdvocteTruth]

Ralf Rangnick is a legendary figure and its fair to say he's deserving of all the plaudits.

Unlike England who seemingly have zero strategy when playing. Austria plays a targeted style customized to their opposition.