The Bundesliga coaching cradle: Ralf Rangnick, Pep Guardiola, Thomas Tuchel, and Jürgen Klopp in the Premier League
The Bundesliga has not only produced some of the best footballers in the world – with current Striker of the Year Robert Lewandowski a case in point – it has also been a breeding ground for some of the best technicians to have graced the planet.
Franz Beckenbauer became the first person to win a World Cup both as a player and as a coach with Germany, while Ottmar Hitzfeld and Jupp Heynckes both led two different clubs to UEFA Champions League glory – the latter becoming the first to win a Bundesliga, Champions League and DFB Cup treble.
More recently, the trend of outstanding coaches emerging in the Bundesliga has continued, albeit with several now enjoying even greater success abroad. bundesliga.com takes a look at a host of the game's current top coaches who earned some of their stripes in the Bundesliga…
Pep Guardiola
Club: Bayern Munich
Titles: Bundesliga (2014, 2015, 2016), DFB Cup (2014, 2016), UEFA Super Cup (2014), FIFA World Club Cup (2014)
Granted, the Bundesliga was not where Pep Guardiola cut his coaching cloth, but it is where he confirmed that his title-winning exploits at Barcelona could be reproduced at another club, with other players (and without Lionel Messi), and in another country and footballing culture. The Catalan arrived in Munich in 2014 as arguably the greatest coaching talent in the world, even if he had just taken a one-year sabbatical. Prior to that battery-charging break, he had not only led Barcelona to success upon success in Spain (three straight La Liga titles, two Copa del Reys) and Europe (two Champions League crowns), but he had done so with a new, innovative and exciting brand of football which would sweep across the continent.
Watch: Guardiola's debut season at Bayern
In Bavaria, he tinkered with his tika-taka traditions and developed some of the most effective attacking football the Bundesliga has ever witnessed. Although he ultimately did not manage to take the record champions further than the semi-finals of the Champions League, he set new domestic records and both personal and collective benchmarks in guiding Bayern with an enviable degree of swagger to three straight Bundesliga titles and two DFB Cup triumphs. His pursuit of a third Champions League title continues at Manchester City, where he has been one step closer than he managed in Munich, but is yet to take that elusive final step.
Thomas Tuchel
Clubs: Mainz (2009-2015), Borussia Dortmund (2015-2017)
Titles: DFB Cup (2017), German U19 championship (2005, 2009)
That is because another Bundesliga-hardened coach beat him to it. Tuchel had only been coaching in the Premier League for a matter of months when he led Chelsea to an unexpected Champions League triumph in 2021. He is proving in 2021/22 how that extraordinary achievement was anything but a fluke, with the Blues among the favourites to win the Premier League. Anyone who witnessed what he did with Mainz and Dortmund will not be surprised in the slightest that Tuchel has been such a hit in England.
Watch: Tuchel's top 5 Bundesliga moments
Want more Bundesliga Action?
He spent the best part of a decade honing his craft on the touchline with Mainz and Borussia Dortmund, before reaching consecutive Champions League finals with Paris Saint-Germain and the Blues. He even had Ralf Rangnick to thank for introducing him to his new career after injury cut short his playing career.
The rest, as they say, is history and he took his first senior coaching position with Mainz, thrown in at the deep end just days before the start of the 2009/10 season. Despite Mainz having only just been promoted to the top flight the previous campaign, Tuchel steered them to a ninth-placed finish in his debut season. He kicked off his second term at the helm with seven successive wins, including a 2-1 victory away to record German champions Bayern, and took the 05ers into Europe for the first time in the club's history. After a one-year break from the game, Tuchel took the reins at Dortmund, helping BVB finish as Bundesliga runners-up in 2015/16 and taking the side to DFB Cup glory the following year. Two successful years with Paris Saint-Germain were almost capped with Champions League glory, only for Kingsley Coman to earn Bayern the trophy in 2020. He avenged that at the first time of asking with Chelsea, and is looking odds-on to add further trophies to The Blues' cabinet.
Jürgen Klopp
Clubs: Mainz (2001-2008), Borussia Dortmund (2008-2015)
Titles: Bundesliga (2011, 2012), DFB Cup (2012), DFL Supercup (2014, 2015)
At Mainz, Tuchel set a club record for average points per game (1.41), beating the previous best mark established by another club legend: Jürgen Klopp (1.13). The latter earned such a status by guiding the 05ers into the Bundesliga for the first time in their history in 2004, and his tearful farewell at their former Bruchwegstadion hammered home how strong the bond was between the club, Klopp and the Mainz fans.
Watch: Klopp: Made in the Bundesliga
There would be tears of joy just a few years later, though, when Klopp broke Bayern Munich's hegemony of Bundesliga football and took BVB back to the top of the pile. It took a few seasons to restore Dortmund to their former glory, with sixth and fifth-placed finishes before the world was given an introduction to Lewandowski. He and Mario Götze – both of whom who would subsequently cross the divide and move to Bayern – inspired Dortmund to a first Bundesliga title since 2002 with two matches of the 2010/11 campaign to spare. As if that was not impressive enough, they followed it up with a Bundesliga and DFB Cup double – despite losing three of their first six fixtures.
They did not lose another game of an unforgettable season, however, and finished eight points ahead of Bayern, setting what at the time was a new Bundesliga points record (81). Although they could not follow it up with a third straight title in 2013, they came of age in Europe, emerging from a 'group of death' which included Manchester City, Real Madrid and Ajax to go all the way to the final, where an Arjen Robben goal for Bayern would deny Klopp Champions League glory. Like in Mainz, the tears flowed when Klopp did leave two years later, but sadness would once again turn to joy when, in 2019, he finally lifted the Champions League aloft with Liverpool. A year later, he brought the Premier League title back to Merseyside for the first time since 1990 and is already engraving the 'legend' suffix after his name at a third club.
Ralf Rangnick
Clubs: SSV Ulm (1996-1999), VfB Stuttgart (1999-2001), Hannover 96 (2001-2004), Schalke (2004-2005, 2011), Hoffenheim (2006-2011), RB Leipzig (2015-2019)
Titles: DFB Cup (2011), Bundesliga 2 (2002), DFL Supercup (2012)
Although coaching was one of Rangnick’s first loves, he has spent time as a sporting director and a head of sport development over a career which has already spanned a quarter of a century, and now he is back in the dugout – at Manchester United, no less.
Guiding Ulm into the Bundesliga is a feat which rarely makes it on the radar of Rangnick’s achievements over two decades coaching in Germany. For those with a short memory, Klopp reminded the world about it when asked about Rangnick's impending arrival at Manchester, narrating a story which pretty much sums up what United can expect: "He's a really good man and an outstanding coach. He's a really experienced manager and famously built two clubs from nowhere to proper forces in Germany - Hoffenheim and RB Leipzig. He started as a young man at Stuttgart, coaching the reserve team, and kept going from there. Ulm getting to the Bundesliga was insane at the time, and he made his way up."
Leading Hoffenheim from Germany's third division to the Bundesliga in consecutive years echoed his 'insane' achievement with Ulm, and he guided them to a seventh-placed finish in their first season in Germany's top flight. Lured by a similar challenge at Leipzig, Rangnick worked the same magic to earn them promotion to the Bundesliga before passing the coaching baton on to Ralph Hasenhüttl (see more below) and moving upstairs.
He could not shake the coaching bug, however, and returned for another season, guiding the Red Bulls to third in 2018/19, qualifying them for the UEFA Champions League for only the second time in their history. A return to the more plush surroundings of the office led him to Lokomotiv Moscow, where he oversaw the Russian club's development in a similar position to that which he had held in Leipzig. A move to Manchester United has followed as he becomes the seventh German coach to take the helm at a Premier League club, ready to impart over two decades’ worth of knowledge and expertise on one of the clubs with the greatest footballing traditions, and reacquaint himself once again with students he was largely responsible for nurturing, in Klopp, Tuchel and Hasenhüttl.
Ralph Hasenhüttl
Clubs: Unterhaching (2007-2010), VfR Aalen (2011-2013), Ingolstadt (2013-2016), Leipzig (2016-2018)
Titles: Bundesliga 2 (2015)
Having shown his credentials by guiding an unfancied Ingolstadt to the Bundesliga 2 title in 2015 – taking them into the Bundesliga for the first time in their history – Hasenhüttl kept the Bavarians in the top flight for a second season by finishing their first term 11th. That caught Rangnick's eye and he lured him to Leipzig to replace him on the bench and lead them in their historic first-ever season in the Bundesliga. The Austrian eclipsed his success with Ingolstadt by immediately guiding the Red Bulls to a runners-up spot behind Bayern Munich, thus laying the foundations for what would become a new rivalry at the top of the German game.
That earned both him and Leipzig a first ever shot at European football, and although they were eliminated from the UEFA Champions League in the group stage, they did win at Monaco and beat Porto to make waves on the continent. They then progressed to the quarter-finals of the UEFA Europa League, where they were beaten by Olympique Marseille, but a sixth-placed finish in the Bundesliga led to him moving on in the summer. He joined Southampton in December 2018 and has kept them in the Premier League ever since.
Daniel Farke
Clubs: Lippstadt (2009-2015), Borussia Dortmund reserves (2015-2017)
Titles: -
While he may not have any titles to his name for his time in Germany, Daniel Farke will be remembered in England for guiding Norwich City into the Premier League – twice. After a first season settling in at the Championship (England's second tier) club, he guided them to the title in 2018/19.
While he could not keep the Canaries in the top flight, he ensured they came straight back up again by picking up a club record haul of 97 points in 2020/21, earning him his second title as Championship champion.
Not only those achievements ensure he will be remembered fondly in Norfolk, even if he was ultimately unable to keep the Canaries chirping away at the top table. He certainly had them singing a marvellous melody in the Championship, with their exciting, attacking brand of football sparking the neologism 'Farkeball'.
It was successful too, as the aforementioned points' record suggests, and former Schalke forward Teemu Pukki contributed 29 of their 93 goals in the 2018/19 campaign – the second most by any player at that level in a single season. There were no big trophies to show for it, but Farke left a legacy behind at Norwich, thanks to the lessons learned in German football.
Related news
Matchday 30 overview
Hamburg's promotion hopes suffered a significant setback at the hands of division leaders Holstein Kiel, while St. Pauli bounced back in Hannover.
Matchday 30 teams
How much rotation will we see from newly crowned champions Leverkusen as they bid to remain unbeaten away at top-four chasing Dortmund?
Vote for your Bundesliga Team of the Season!
Pick your best XI from our list of 40 nominees to win exclusive prizes!