This is Ralph Hasenhüttl’s fourth year in charge of Premier League club FC Southampton. There are reasons why this symbiosis has been working so well for so long. On Saturday there will be a special reunion.
Those who have arrived can also put their feet up. While all hell broke loose again in many places on the island on the so-called “Deadline Day”, “I didn’t want and didn’t need to”, Ralph Hasenhüttl reveals in the big interview (Monday edition). Last-minute transfers: none whatsoever. “Because we have a very large and balanced squad. “
So he seems to have really arrived at Southampton FC, the man who had never stayed at a club for more than two and a half years before – at Unterhaching, Aalen, Ingolstadt and Leipzig. But England is something else.
Hasenhüttl enthuses about the “motherland of football”, about the “perhaps best league in the world”, where he has learned a lot, just like his former companion Ralf Rangnick, whose Manchester United he will meet on Saturday. At Old Trafford, the theatre of dreams. In the Premier League, their dreams have come true, which unites the former protagonists of RB Leipzig.
That their talented striker will leave the Saints again has long been a foregone conclusion
Hasenhüttl will benefit from his experience in Saxony in his fourth year with the Saints, who do not presume to proclaim a top-six finish as a goal. “Talented players should be developed so that the best of them find their way to us in the future” – even if “we are not the end of the line for many players”.
The head coach is already familiar with this model from Leipzig, and at Southampton it has become so much part of the flesh, blood and development process that top scorer Danny Ings (departure to Aston Villa) has been replaced by 20-year-old loan striker Armando Broja. Whom his club Chelsea do not want to sell – but then Broja will be followed by the next one. “That’s the type of player we want to attract,” said Hasenhüttl.
And because “word has spread in the Premier League that young players can quickly gain match practice here”, and Hasenhüttl has “no problem” with being a “transit station”, a consistency is emerging at the Saints that he has not known before. Which the “long-suffering” fans recognise as an “honest and down-to-earth way” and which has not been shaken by the change of ownership.
At the beginning of the year, Southampton, as far away from international business as they are from the relegation zone, were taken over by an investment group led by TV mogul Dragan Solak. The traditional club is now in Serbian instead of Chinese hands, but this does not have a great impact on the day-to-day sporting business.
“I received very trusting feedback from the very first moment that I was one of the reasons why they took over the club,” enthused Hasenhüttl. Solak described the Austrian as “really smart” in the Guardian: “I like him a lot,” said the Serb. “With the growing support we give him and his team, hopefully he can develop them into a real top ten team.”
For years, Hasenhüttl has also particularly appreciated the backing of chairman Martin Semmens. Especially given the average length of time a coach stays in the modern football business.
“I have found a club that has shown me an extreme amount of trust, despite all the setbacks. There were some phases when it was really hard to go through with me there, let’s just think of the 0-9 against Leicester.” That’s why he “immediately agreed” to the contract extension until 2024, says Hasenhüttl. That would make it five and a half years at the same club.
Hodgson as a cautionary tale
And yet, in the week of the duel with Rangnick and Manchester United, against whom, incidentally, he also lost 9-0 almost exactly a year ago, the 54-year-old repeatedly hints at an end to the harmonious consistency. Hasenhüttl wants to quit as coach in 2024 because of the “high energy expenditure”. And because he also wants to experience other things – “and not sit on the bench at 74 like Roy Hodgson. Definitely not. “
