Much of the initial reaction and debate around Ralf Rangnick’s appointment centred around one question: whether Manchester United could meet the physical demands of his style.
To press and counter-press when you do not have the ball requires a certain level of fitness, so too does playing a high tempo, direct attacking style when in possession of the ball. It is not just down to physicality, though, as the new interim manager spelled out on the morning of his unveiling.
“It’s train the brain,” Rangnick said. “Modern football in the last 10 years has completely changed into a more physical, more athletic, more vertical, more high-speed ball game. If you watch games in the early 2000s and compare it with now, you wouldn’t believe it’s the same ball game. It has completely changed and in order to develop teams, you need not only to train the bodies but also the brains."
This was United’s first appearance in the Champions League knock-out stages – the pinnacle of the modern game – for the best part of three years. It is the stage on which a club of their size and stature belongs, one they seek to return to a regular, competitive presence. For much of the evening against Atletico Madrid at the Wanda Metropolitano, this was a type of uninspired, thought-free and borderline brainless performance rarely seen served up by an elite club at this rarefied level.
And yet, as the night threatened to peter out into more familiar disappointment and recriminations, it was salvaged by the player who has responded better to Rangnick’s methods than any other on the training pitches of Carrington.
Anthony Elanga was little more than a hopeful prospect under predecessor Ole Gunnar Solskjaer: a Jimmy Murphy Player of the Year in the academy, who would be handed opportunities in the domestic cups and dead rubbers to maintain the club’s long tradition of promoting talented youth, but without any clear pathway to regular first-team minutes. That changed with a change of manager.
Elanga has impressed Rangnick and his coaches as reliable and hard-working, willing to listen and willing to learn. The effort and the energy that his manager requires is there in possession and out of it. So too is the speed of thought, the assurance in decision-making and the knowledge of how to hit and hurt defences. That was all on display in the goal that snatched a 1-1 draw and saved this United performance from greater scrutiny.
But more than anything else, Elanga is a blank slate. He is not burdened by experience. He is not weighed down by the years of recent misery. He is not encumbered by the muscle memory of playing under a number of different managers with a number of different styles, as the club has flitted one way and another since the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson. He is perhaps this squad’s first unambiguously “Rangnick” player.
Up until his 80th-minute equaliser, United had been desperate. There has been one rule in the Champions League over the past decade: you do not give a Diego Simeone side something to protect. United broke that within seven minutes. The marking of Joao Felix – or lack thereof – will do nothing to ease the scrutiny on captain Harry Maguire, who let the Portuguese bypass him on his way to scoring a brilliant bullet header.
It was a poor goal to concede but the manner in which United attempted to get back into the game was, if anything, worse. The timidity of their passing, the absence of attacking movement, the staid style of play was bereft of ideas. Cristiano Ronaldo offered next to nothing against a team that he has tormented in this competition. Bruno Fernandes was often at his wayward worst.
Marcus Rashford continues to struggle too. The lack of care and attention in United’s play was perhaps summed up best early in the second half when, with Luke Shaw advancing on the overlap, Rashford missed the opportunity to play his left-back into the byline for an easy cut-back and instead passed straight into an Atletico defender’s legs. It was a bad moment on a night of many. The players were not the only ones who appeared to be lacking ideas though.
Rangnick’s substitutions seemed to be an exercise in damage limitation. United’s interim manager had spoken before the game of how the change in the away goals rule meant that it was not that important to score, more important to get a good result. That still appeared to be the case a goal down, given that his first substitutions introduced Aaron Wan-Bissaka, Alex Telles and Nemanja Matic – a conservative trio to send on.
But then, for the disappointing Rashford, there came Elanga. The run into space vacated down Atletico’s right, daring Reinildo Mandava to make a challenge he could not be sure of winning, was the type of incisive movement United’s play had missed all night, the type that Elanga’s more experienced teammates had failed to provide. It made the goal that salvaged this first leg for United and was scored by a player who is benefitting from Rangnick’s brain training.
