Most casual football fans can rhyme off a handful of German coaches. Most go straight for Jurgen Klopp, then comes Jogi Low and then before long most remember reading about Thomas Tuchel at Borussia Dortmund and Julian Nagelsmann at Hoffenheim. But there’s one very few mention.
In fact, it’s not just fans that overlook him. Everton did it too when they reportedly began sniffing around his team and instead of querying about his services they went straight for his boss: Ralf Rangnick. I’m of course talking about Ralph Hasenhuttl: the best Bundesliga coach nobody seems to have heard of.
Having worked wonders at both VfR Aalen and Ingolstadt - getting both teams promoted when they had absolutely no right to be - and now at RB Leipzig, the 50-year old coach has gone from a youth coach in the German third division to masterminding the closest thing the Bundesliga has to a title challenger against Bayern Munich in just 10 years.
Leipzig’s rise to the top table of the Bundesliga is often chalked up as the club spending a fortune and the natural consequences being a second-place finish but a lot of outstanding coaching has gone in to the side that stands before us today.
The secret behind the German coach’s success is his ability to not only win games playing attacking, exciting football but he also has an unquestionable ability to get the very best out of his players - especially young ones.
Under Hasenhuttl’s stewardship Timo Werner has gone from a misused Stuttgart forward to a potential world beater, rivaling Robert Lewandowski and Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang in the goalscoring tables whilst courting the attention of clubs like Real Madrid.
Indeed, in a similar sense he’s plucked Naby Keita from the Austrian Bundesliga and made him a world star. Marcel Sabitzer too. While Emil Forsberg - at the tender age of 24 - looks like a seasoned professional in the Bundesliga. Few may be aware that the Swedish international created more assists in the German top flight than any other player last season.
This season, fans of the club can look forward to what Jean-Kevin Augustin, Bruma and Konrad Laimer can achieve under their coach with the midas touch. Indeed, everything at Leipzig at the moment seems to be turning to gold and it surely won’t be long before clubs in England realise that the man conducting training, picking the team and winning games every weekend may have something to do with it.
