Ralf Rangnick is the primary candidate to replace Stefano Pioli next season on AC Milan’s bench. Much has been said and written about the German manager but some things are not as known to the general public. Milannews.it gathered some of the best anecdotes about the Red Bull executive.
In 1994, VfB Stuttgart wanted to buy the Brazilian Ronaldo. Ral Rangnick, then youth coordinator of the club, met the future superstar in Rio de Janeiro and even gave him a VfB jersey.
As confirmed by Ronaldo himself later in an interview: “Stuttgart was the first club in that period that was interested in me.” The transfer did not materialize due to the high demand of his club at the time, the Cruzeiro Belo Horizonte wanted about five million dollars.
Language knowledge the key
For Rangnick speaking the language where you live is very important to integrate better. For this reason, in Leipzig, he ordered a language course for everyone who did not speak German. Those who did not attend the course were left out of the team.
Punctuality and no mobile phones
Rangnick left Nordi Mukiele and Jean-Kevin Augustin out of the team because they arrived late in the locker room before a Europa League game against Salzburg. The two arrived late because they were busy on their cell phones, and therefore had broken both the rule of delay and the use of mobile phones from the moment you enter the stadium.
Rangnick was interview a couple of days later on the issue: “There are some rules that must be followed. For us, the case ends here. I’m sure the two young players understood the reason for my choice. This may seem tough, but they don’t know how bad their behaviour hurt the team.”
Training timers
In training, Rangnick uses two machines with countdowns. A clock that has an 8-second countdown, this is the time players have to recover the ball when they have lost it. The other clock has a 10-second countdown, this is the time that players have to finish the attack with a shot after recovering the ball.
He explained that with this training, after a couple of weeks, changes have been seen in the games, because the players are used to the unnerving countdown in the training sessions.
