Rangers are still interviewing a variety of candidates to become the club’s next manager – despite suggestions in Spain on Monday indicating Davide Ancelotti already has the job – with sources at Ibrox insisting there is not yet any frontrunner for the role. However, the Italian coach is understood to be one of the favoured names to succeed Philippe Clement at Ibrox.
A group of managers being considered for the post boasts a consistent theme. Namely, their age and lack of real, lengthy experience. It is accurate to suggest this process, led by incoming sporting director Kevin Thelwell and 49ers technical director and football voice Gretar Steinsson, carries a modern edge that the last managerial search lacked. Rangers seem to be following a trend many clubs in modern football have demonstrated in recent years, prioritising expertise over experience in the dugout.
Davide Ancelotti, Dany Rohl and Rob Edwards are some of those who have held discussions over the role, while other names have featured on a long list, including coaches from the Red Bull football school like Marco Rose. However, there is a recognition amongst some internally that more of a possession-based approach, over the primarily vertical style employed by RB coaches, could prove a more effective method.
What Ancelotti and Rohl in particular represent is a model of candidate best qualified to coach a winning football team, not the most experienced figurehead to manage a club. Ancelotti has been his father Carlo’s right-hand man at Real Madrid, Everton, Napoli and Bayern Munich, working at the very elite curve of football and managing a level of player he would not encounter at Ibrox. This job would be his first individual foray into management, whereas Rohl, a year older than Ancelotti at 36, has only worked as Sheffield Wednesday manager. It is fair to suggest either would earn the job at Ibrox on the basis of what the club believe they can do, rather than what they have already done as a manager in their own right.
Increasingly, young managers are earning the biggest jobs as the structures surrounding the dugout in football clubs grow and expand. Last summer, Brighton appointed 32-year-old Fabian Hurzler after he won promotion from the second division in Germany. Bayern Munich, meanwhile, have once again won the Bundesliga after replacing Champions League winning-coach Thomas Tuchel with Vincent Kompany, who had just taken Burnley back to the Championship in underwhelming fashion. Manchester United’s new owners appointed Ruben Amorim, 40, who like Premier League-winning Arne Slot had not worked in one of European football’s top-five leagues. Xabi Alonso, expected to become Real Madrid boss this summer, was given the Bayer Leverkusen role with no experience aside from taking care of the youth teams at Real Sociedad. His jump from coaching the Sociedad Under-13s to the touchline at the Bernabeu will have taken place in six years.
Christoph Freund, Bayern’s sporting director, said upon Kompany’s appointment at the Allianz: “Vincent Kompany is a type of coach who fits in very well with FC Bayern’s playing philosophy and identity: his teams want the ball, want to play dominant and high-intensity football.”
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Simon Rofles, when Alonso was made Bayer boss in 2023: “In Xabi Alonso, we have brought in a coach who was an absolute world-class player for many years, an intelligent strategist and extremely successful at three of the most demanding European leagues.”
And when Manchester United appointed Amorim, rather than pointing to a list of trophies, they branded the Portuguese coach “one of the most exciting and highly rated young coaches in European football”.
When Richard Hughes was looking for a man to succeed Jurgen Klopp, he considered dossiers of data to reveal suitability instead of individuals with a Premier League-winning track record. Mikel Arteta has transformed Arsenal despite the manager’s role being his first. There are many more examples of this trend across football – the value of being able to coach a style and system is paramount. In an era of career coaches, football is so different to what it was. In some extreme senses, sporting directors now hold the function of a traditional manager and figurehead, while head coaches are the assistants who were always more active on the training pitch.
The speed of change in modern football and tactical hegemony across the board remains a relevant factor. Clubs value the ability to transform on the training ground over a track record of trophies. Why else is someone like Jose Mourinho battling for the Turkish top flight despite winning the Premier League three times and the Champions League twice?
The point being, it is no longer an expectation in many clubs that the coach fulfils the obligations a manager once assumed. They aren’t steering the club’s trajectory, setting the playing style in stone or identifying players. Instead, they use their area of expertise to coach a squad brought together by a collective and work collaboratively within a vision. There is succession planning and long-term thinking that provides a healthy tension with the need for results.
Why does it need to be this way? It’s easier to sack a manager than a whole team and sporting directors don’t answer to the public in a visible sense as the man in the dugout does. It is unrealistic to build an entire project around a manager, aside from in the most extreme of circumstances.
To differing degrees, Rangers have made Beale then Clement the linchpin of their operation and subsequently have been left to pick up the pieces upon their departures.
Rangers prioritising fixing the structure around the manager, rather than hoping an incumbent boss will fix everything and allowing them either too much control or too much patience, is wise.
While Clement’s blend of winning and dominant football was a key factor in earning the job back in 2023, this time around, the process will feature far more scrutiny on potential appointees’ game models and processes.
With a sporting director, CEO, group technical director (Steinsson) and club technical director (Nils Koppen) already in place, the club need a manager who will be a part of the picture, not the whole image. There will be far more scrutiny on performance than before and, if all goes to plan, a safeguarding between appointments that simply hasn’t existed for far too long.
That is what has harmed Rangers in recent years, placing the manager right at the top of the football tree. Tenures are too short and results too fragile for that to work. Celtic have had more success with such a method but enjoyed more stable leadership at the top of the club, better quality in the dugout and a largely consistent game model to recruit for. By contrast, Rangers’ ideas have changed with the wind since 2021.
A recent internal review at Ibrox towards the end of Clement’s tenure showed that on the basis of underlying numbers Rangers have been behind Celtic in four of the last five seasons. Although simple, that is what must be corrected. No one in the modern era is better placed to tell players the demands of playing for the club than Ferguson and yet, clearly, results and performances domestically demonstrate that reputation is not enough.
It is providing solutions on the pitch from the training ground – with a clear idea that control games and unpick defences – that will offer the club the best chance of bridging the gap.
An appointment like Ancelotti would carry risks, of course, but what is a safe pair of hands at this stage?
If footballing trends are anything to go by, more and more clubs are deciding that inexperience is a risk worth taking so long as the expertise and ideas make up the difference.
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