Ralf Rangnick describes it as his “football epiphany”. It was February 1983 and, aged 25, he was serving as player-manager of Viktoria Backnang, a small-town team in Germany’s sixth tier, when Valeriy Lobanovskiy’s Dynamo Kiev turned up for a mid-season friendly. Lobanovskiy’s side were regarded as the strongest in the Soviet Union and it was no surprise they easily swatted their amateur opponents aside. But the manner in which they did it made a lasting impression on Rangnick, a bewildered figure in central midfield. “A few minutes in, when the ball had gone out for a throw, I had to stop and count the opposition players,” he recalls in Raphael Honigstein’s book, Das Reboot . “That was the first time I felt what it was like to come up against a team who systematically pressed the ball. “I had played against big professional teams before – and of course we lost those games as well – but they at least gave you a bit of breathing space, the chance to ‘put a foot on the ball’, as we ...