It’s amazing to think Julian Nagelsmann is still only 35.
It’s a testament to his talent that he is more established than someone of his age may otherwise be, and feels like he’s been around forever. He was the Bundesliga’s youngest permanent head coach when he took charge of Hoffenheim aged 28, and was still just 33 when he arrived at Bayern Munich.
Advertisement
Despite his dismissal from the Bavarian giantslast month, Nagelsmann remains one of the best young coaches in the world, and won’t be short of options when he chooses to return to the dugout.
So, what now for Julian Nagelsmann?
Where did it go wrong at Bayern?
First, it’s worth considering why he is on the market. The short answer is: results. Bayern are in the unusual position of not being top of the Bundesliga — only by a point, but the burgeoning juggernaut of Borussia Dortmund overtook them last weekend.
The Bayern hierarchy didn’t think this was going to change, and this chart of Bayern’s xG, for and against, over the last few seasons provides some illustration of how things have declined this season. In the most basic terms, their xG against is trending up, and their xG for is trending down.
Throw in an underwhelming (by their standards) 2021-22, plus a tricky relationship with some in the dressing room, and the sense that he has never been able to fully get the squad on board with his ideas, and the Bavarian giants decided they couldn’t wait any longer to make the change, replacing Nagelsmann with his old mentor Thomas Tuchel.
GO DEEPER
Bayern Munich, Julian Nagelsmann and a very surprising sacking
What is his style of management?
You don’t get to his position at a young age without being confident and charismatic. He is often characterised as primarily a tactical manager, and he is doubtlessly innovative and dynamic in that sense. But he places more emphasis on the psychological aspects of coaching.
He once famously said: “Thirty per cent of coaching is tactics, 70 per cent social competence… At this level, the quality of the players at your disposal will ensure that you play well within a good tactical setup — if the psychological condition is right.”
However, it’s no picnic playing under him. He is known for working his players extremely hard, and also for constantly changing his line-ups and systems to suit the opposition, particularly in his days at Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig.
What tactics does he favour and how flexible is he?
Historically, Nagelsmann has favoured a system rooted in a three-man defence. As you can see from these graphics, he almost exclusively used variants of that at Hoffenheim…
… while for the most part, he repeated that at RB Leipzig, with fluid versions of a 3-4-3 and 3-1-4-2 his most common systems. But this is where he starts to get more flexible, starting to use a back four in a rough approximation of a 4-4-2.
At Leipzig, in 2019, he took a Ralf Rangnick team that was all about direct passing and frantic pressing and turned them into a more conventional elite possession side — pretty impressive considering the players had been recruited to play in that Red Bull style implemented by his predecessor.
Over the last season and a half at Bayern, his default system for the majority of his games in Munich has been a 4-2-3-1, but it isn’t quite as simple as that. More recently he has settled on a dynamic hybrid system, with Bayern generally starting with a back four when out of possession, but moving to a three when they have the ball.
In Munich, he inherited a team that was already an elite possession side but changed some things about how they play, such as creating more chances through the middle (a hallmark of Pep Guardiola teams) rather than from the wings (which Bayern generally did more than other top sides).
Advertisement
Just look at how they basically gave up on crossing.
In his short career, he has shown he’s not afraid to change a team’s style.
What is he like managing big names?
This is where alarm bells might start to ring for the biggest clubs — or at least the clubs with the biggest players. It’s not a massive secret that Nagelsmann wasn’t exactly close to arguably the two biggest voices in the Bayern dressing room, Manuel Neuer and Thomas Muller. His failure to convince those big players of his methods might put off other clubs with dominating, established characters in their team.
GO DEEPER
Neuer: 'I felt like my heart was being ripped out. It was the most brutal thing in my career'
What sort of squad would suit him?
The sense is that Nagelsmann is a coach to improve a team at a level below the very elite, rather than win trophies with a side already there. Younger players could be more receptive to his ways, as they were at Leipzig and Hoffenheim: players that may well ask questions but perhaps won’t question him…
Will the failure at Bayern put other clubs off?
Possibly.
However, prospective employers might look at his broader career. By FiveThirtyEight’s SPI team strength model, as shown in the graphic below, which accounts not only for results and opponent strength but also for factors such as the value of the squad, venue, fixture importance and the strength of underlying performances, Nagelsmann’s trajectory looks fairly promising.
It’s a narrative reach to directly attribute the rise and fall of clubs’ fortunes to the head coach, but his first two clubs got better early in his tenure and worse after he left, which might suggest the manager was doing something right. RB Leipzig have never quite recovered to the heights they hit when Nagelsmann transformed their possession game, and Hoffenheim have slid from European spots under Nagelsmann to dangerously close to the Bundesliga relegation zone.
Advertisement
On the other hand, the chart shows that Nagelsmann’s teams tended to simply sustain their early gains rather than continue to improve under his leadership. And at Bayern, unlike Hoffenheim and Leipzig, he leaves behind a team slightly weaker in the model’s estimation than the one he inherited.
Still, if we shrug off Bayern’s so-so current season as the product of losing an all-time great striker, we can spin a pretty rosy story about Nagelsmann’s young career from this chart.
Will he want to go straight back into management?
It’s difficult to say. It’s unlikely that he had his eye on his next gig, and managers of similar stature have shown recently that they’re perfectly happy to be patient: Tuchel left Chelsea in September but has waited for the job he wants, while Mauricio Pochettino was on the sidelines for around 14 months after leaving Tottenham, and it’s coming up on nine months since he left PSG.
Nagelsmann can still afford to be picky, and the good news for him is that there might be a few choice vacancies available either immediately, or in the summer.
So, where might he go next?
Tottenham Hotspur
Antonio Conte’s departure from his role as Tottenham head coach was confirmed on Sunday. Nagelsmann ticks a lot of boxes for Spurs: tactically innovative, young but with a Champions League pedigree, and would perhaps be a middle ground between the ‘win now’ managers like Conte and Jose Mourinho, and a less established but promising name like Ruben Amorim or Roberto De Zerbi.
It’s also worth noting that Spurs have long admired Nagelsmann and have tried to appoint him twice: once after Pochettino’s dismissal in 2019, but he had not long been at Leipzig, and again in 2021 after he had joined Bayern.
On the flip side, Nagelsmann’s reputation for abrasiveness that was unpopular with some of the Bayern players this season may count against him.
Advertisement
Would he want the job? It could suit him: they have some good young talent, and their more established players like Harry Kane or Son Heung-min are perhaps less likely to clash with him than big names at other clubs. They have mostly been less than the sum of their parts under Conte, but Nagelsmann may think he can lift them up again.
Paris Saint-Germain
Instinctively, you might think PSG will steer clear of a coach like Nagelsmann, having already tried and cast aside Pochettino and Tuchel.
Additionally, if Nagelsmann rubbed Bayern’s big names up the wrong way, then one shudders to think what could go down between him and the outsized personalities in the PSG dressing room. All the best trying to turn Neymar, Lionel Messi and Kylian Mbappe into a crack-pressing trio.
(Photo: Simon Stacpoole/Offside/Offside via Getty Images)But then again PSG have tried basically every other kind of manager, with the Christophe Gaultier experiment seemingly spluttering too. Might they think of Nagelsmann as the coach to helm their reset, building around young talents like Hugo Ekitike and Warren Zaire-Emery?
Nagelsmann has been on Real Madrid’s radar for some time, and while Carlo Ancelotti’s contract runs until 2024, his future is uncertain.
The arrival of Nagelsmann would be a mini-revolution given that Madrid have gone several years without changing their system, while their transitions in attack tend to be slow. But a shake-up could be just what Real need if they finish the season without a major title.
Even so, Nagelsmann’s bright ideas could work against him. Ancelotti has created a harmonious dressing room in which he gives players ample space and in which he is highly respected as a veteran coach. The German could create divisions between players if he looks to change that.
The similarities between Real and Bayern could be a concern, but he might have learned from the Bavarian experience, and it’s worth remembering what Benjamin Kauffmann, a team-mate in his playing days, said about Nagelsmann: “He was so switched on and focused, he solved problems before they truly arose.”
Advertisement
Sounds like the ideal quality for the manager of a super club.
Chelsea
Graham Potter was dismissed by Chelsea on Sunday, a week after Conte left Spurs, despite being given a five-year contract last September.
Nagelsmann boasts many of the characteristics Chelsea’s owners admire in a head coach: he likes his teams to entertain, and his record of working with young players could be particularly attractive.
Kalidou Koulibaly and Thiago Silva aside, most of Chelsea’s key outfield players and recent recruits are 24 and younger: Kai Havertz, Enzo Fernandez, Reece James, Wesley Fofana, Noni Madueke, Mykhailo Mudryk, and throw in the expected summer arrival of Christopher Nkunku, who has worked with Nagelsmann before. If Nagelsmann’s strength lies in working with youngsters, Chelsea’s squad fits that bill most neatly.
Nkunku worked with Nagelsmann at Leipzig (Photo: Getty Images)Additionally, it’s worth noting that Nagelsmann’s closest relationship at Bayern was with Joshua Kimmich, the nucleus around which the protons and electrons buzzed. There aren’t many players around on Kimmich’s level, but Enzo Fernandez is perhaps the most similar.
As the metronome of the team, the pair share the similar role of starting attacks for their side, able to look after possession with near-perfect accuracy while also being a key cog in their team’s attacking machine. Both can progress the ball into dangerous areas and even chip in with the odd goal and assist. The difference is that Kimmich has shown this skill set for many seasons in a Bayern shirt, whereas Fernandez is just starting out. It could be a way for Chelsea to get their best from their most expensive investment, and a kindred spirit to attract Nagelsmann to west London.
RB Leipzig
Would Nagelsmann view it as a retrograde step to return to his former club? Possibly, but they haven’t exactly been flourishing without him: they finished third and second in their two seasons with him in charge, but they’re fifth and way off the pace, and are on their third head coach since his departure, with Jesse Marsch and Domenico Tedesco dispensed with, and Marco Rose in place.
Advertisement
Might the two parties consider what life has been like without each other, and conclude that a reunion is what will make them both happy?
The wildcards
It’s pretty unlikely there is going to be a vacancy at Anfield this summer, but should Jurgen Klopp decide he doesn’t have a rebuild in him then Nagelsmann could fit nicely at Anfield. A fresh voice but not an entirely unfamiliar style, someone who is perhaps a little more tactically flexible than Klopp, a coach who can get the best from the array of fine attacking talent at Anfield?
Atletico Madrid would be interesting if only to see what would happen if they replaced Diego Simeone with someone so contrasting. What about Serie A? The traditional powers are all miles away this season, so Nagelsmann could probably have his pick if he fancied a crack at Juventus, Inter or Milan.
Wherever Nagelsmann ends up, it’s going to be fascinating.
Let the bunfight for his signature begin…
(Additional contributors: Charlie Eccleshare, Guillermo Rai, Simon Johnson)
(Top photo: Christian Kaspar-Bartke/Getty Images)
ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57k2xrbWhmbXxzfJFsZmlrX2eCcLbUpaCapl2jrqixy6ykmqaeYrO2wNSrnGabnKqvbsDOraueppiWum680qBkq52RoXqurcOroJ1lk52yrb%2FEmmY%3D