Cristiano Ronaldo wasn’t in a mood to mince words. Ronaldo, 36 back then, was in his second stint at Manchester United when Ralf Rangnick – who was the club’s interim manager – relegated the Portuguese from superstar to a mere cog by asking him to press, show aggression and maintain structure like any other player in the team.
Ronaldo didn’t take it too well and was brutal in his assessment of the German.
Throwback to when Ronaldo threw Ralf Rangnick under the bus to make an excuse for his poor performance at Man Utd.pic.twitter.com/7rKKv5liNQ https://t.co/OmXAum3Uf7
— Max Stéph (@maxstephh) June 25, 2024
“All the coaches that I had in my career, I call them boss because if they assume the job we have to call them in that way. But deep inside me, I never saw him as the boss,” Ronaldo had said.
On Tuesday, the Euros proved how wrong he was.
Austria might be one of the best-coached teams at these European Championships. Their players have entered this continental affair with the fitness of elite clubs participating in three games a week in top European club competitions. Where England manager Gareth Southgate admitted that there was a reluctance to press higher up the pitch due to a lack of that level of fitness, Austria handed their coach the freedom to implement his vision. And they chose the man many consider to be one of the allfathers of the gegenpress — a tactic in which a team, after losing possession of the ball, immediately attempts to win back possession, rather than falling back to regroup.
A massive win for Austria! 🇦🇹
They finish top of Group D 👏#EURO2024 | #NEDAUT pic.twitter.com/WQgeogPbEc
— UEFA EURO 2024 (@EURO2024) June 25, 2024
“You can see a clear development since the coach joined the team. We are now very strong against the ball, so everyone knows when we lose the ball, we have to switch and hunt down the ball. That is the biggest difference,” said Marcel Sabitzer, Austria’s winning goalscorer and another Manchester United ‘reject’.
In Rangnick’s Austria, the midfielders are kings and rule the pitch with an iron fist. He asks them to run like their lives depend on it and he asks them to foul smartly. Austria has conceded the most fouls by a team this tournament with 49 over three games. Rangnick, a master of the dark arts, kept two of his primary midfielders — Christoph Baumgartner and Konrad Laimer — out of the game against the Dutch to protect them from yellow cards. They still ended up having 61% possession in the first 20 minutes, according to Opta.
A large part of that dominance comes from their attackers and midfielders operating a press higher up the field. The Dutch on many occasions tried to play out of it but ended up conceding the ball in the midfield – three of Austria’s ball recoveries came in their attacking third and as many as 20 came in the midfield third, according to Opta.
The results back Austria’s progress. In the run-up to the European Championships, they’ve gained a win against Italy and draws against France and Belgium – teams that don’t operate at the same work rate as the Austrians labour to do but still have enough star power to dispatch them. Austria’s first game against France at these Euros saw exactly that script play out. The Austrians made the same number of shots as France and were largely successful in controlling the midfield, matching the possession stats of their opponents. But they still lost courtesy of a 38th-minute own goal from Maximillian Wober. That result now looks like an outlier.
On paper, the Austrians are only topped by the Germans when it comes to a crucial statistic that measures the pressing intensity of a team. Passes per defensive action (PPDA) indicates how many passes a team made before their opponents attempted a tackle or an interception. The lower the PPDA, the more a team presses higher up the pitch. The top two teams at this Euro 2024 after the first two rounds of the group stage – Julian Nagelsmann’s Germany with 7.46 and Ralf Rangnicks’ Austria with 8.52. If a stray thought occurred about England – their 22.63 PPDA is the worst at the Euros.
Against the Poles, Austria ran out as 3-1 victors – and the scoreline should have been a lot more favourable to Rangnick’s team, who missed a couple of goals with just Wojciech Szczesny to beat. It was against the Dutch on Tuesday though, where the German really unleashed his team and proclaimed them as contenders for these European Championships. Rangnick was courted by Bayern Munich prior to the continental competition’s start. But he chose to stay with Austria and believed in his coaching methods to carry them out of Group D not just as the third-placed team as many believed they would be, but rather as the group toppers.
