Ralf Rangnick made an unlikely heretic. His rimless eyeglasses and charcoal sport coat gave him the air of a serious, but benevolent, schoolmaster. Standing in front of a live studio audience, he looked just a little uneasy. He seemed to take comfort in the familiarity of his only prop: a tactics board dotted with pale magnets.
It was, by some distance, the biggest platform Rangnick — then 40 — had ever had. He was the coach of modest Ulm, in Germany’s second division. His host, the leonine Michael Steinbrecher, had a far greater profile, and his program, “Das Aktuelle Sportstudio,” was a national institution.