Former RB Leipzig chief Ralf Rangnick oversaw the signing

Rangnick: "I can't say from distance what exactly he's doing and has done. I can only talk about how he has come across to me. In 2012, in the Salzburg training camp in Leogang, we went jogging together every morning. At some point, on our second or third run he asked me 'Ralf, would it make sense for us to sit down with Roger Schmidt, because we're still looking for an assistant coach.' He wasn't sure if he saw himself as more of a coach rather than sitting in the back office and helping the club develop in the right way. I decided we should speak with Roger Schmidt and two days later Oliver was his assistant. He was in that position for two years and helped progress the team along with Roger. Roger wanted to take him along to Leverkusen, I believe, but he decided to take the head coaching position at SV Ried instead. He did really well there and earned himself a move to Linz where he took LASK to promotion and lead them to the top of the Austrian Bundesliga. For me, it was only a question of when he would take the next step up to the Bundesliga. He's somebody who people tend to underestimate due to his personality and his unflappable and unexcitable nature. I think he's one of the most underrated coaches in the Bundesliga. He'll continue his journey and I think the step up to VfL Wolfsburg in the Bundesliga was the perfect next step. When you look at what he gets out of the team it's almost the absolute maximum. They're a team with some good players, but they aren't so good as to be automatic favourites for third place in the Bundesliga. That shows that a lot of hard work from the coaches is involved."

Ralf Rangnick (l.) has been the leading pioneer for many great German coaches, including Jürgen Klopp (r.). - imago

bundesliga.com: Adi Hütter, Marco Rose, Danny Röhl, Roger Schmidt, Thomas Tuchel, Ralph Hasenhüttl; what sets the Rangnick school of coaches apart?

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Rangnick: "That has really developed by itself alongside everything else. It began in Hoffenheim where Markus Gisdol was U23 coach and then became my assistant for six months during my second tenure at Schalke. Unfortunately, it wasn't longer. Those things weren't explicitly on the agenda at Hoffenheim and RB, although of course, we did scout coaches because from the day I signed on the dotted line I was looking for two new head coaches at Salzburg and Leipzig. From that moment on we always scouted coaches alongside players. We had something of a list for the head coaching position because you never know when you will need a new one. At every stage, we always had one or two coaches on our list who we would have liked to get. That didn't always work out, which is why I had to step in for a year each before Ralph Hasenhüttl and Julian Nagelsmann became available. That came about organically, to be honest. With the success of RB, we have now become a market leader due to the way we work, not just in coaching, but also in other roles. We have other people such as Frank Ählig, Jochen Schneider, Nicklas Dietrich or Hans-Dieter Hermann at the DFB who we haven't even talked about. They all spent some time with us. At this point, it's something of a seal of quality that if someone worked at RB for one, two, three or four years other clubs can assume they're really good people. For us it was like this: when we started in 2012 we decided it made sense to create synergies and we incorporated a clear playing style at both clubs. We decided we wanted to focus on young players with a lot of room for improvement, who were signing their first or second professional contract. Not their final or penultimate one, as had been the case previously. That breeds a different type of motivation and demand for performance within the two teams and then we searched for the best possible head coaches, assistant coaches and other specialists. They then progressed alongside the team and eventually became targets for other clubs. As I said, it was clear to us that we wanted to do things in that way. For coaches and specialists to develop in the same way as well was a very welcome side-effect that I didn't really have on my radar in the first two or three years."

bundesliga.com: What did you personally teach those head coaches?

Rangnick: "It obviously helped that I had spent most of my career previously as a head coach myself and knew how a head coach thinks. Right at the start, in the times of Roger Schmidt or Alex Zorniger, it was important for me to work out how far I could go and what lines I could or couldn't cross. There were a few moments of friction in the early years with those two coaches, where I had to realise they were right and I had tried to be too close to things. By the third year at the latest, I had built up the experience in that respect too, because it was my first time as a sporting director and not as a head coach. What did help me was the network I had already built because I knew quite well where the various top people were, be they head coaches, assistant coaches, sports psychologists, physios or fitness coaches. I already had a big enough network in all of those areas, or at least knew who I could ask to find someone in those areas. In the entire time there was never a role that we hadn't scouted. We scouted scouts, we scouted assistants, we even scouted chefs, because we always challenged ourselves to find the best person for a given job. I'm sure that was also key to the development we underwent. The basis of that for head coaches was always a deep and close trust and I think the coaches also realised eventually that having someone like me who understood what they were thinking and feeling was good for their development. I could give them advice in a friendly way and tell them, look I've been in that situation and I would do this or let that go. That certainly also contributed to the coaches accepting how closely I worked with them and allowing it to happen."

Watch: Tyler Adams at home in Leipzig

bundesliga.com: Why do you think the Bundesliga is such a well-suited home for players from the USA?

Rangnick: "I don't know if only the Bundesliga is a good home for them, I think other leagues have begun to realise that it's worthwhile from time-to-time to cast an eye over the MLS because there are players who are good enough and gifted enough to make the leap. That's logical on some level because the USA has a population of about 230 million people and purely statistically there should be some really good footballers there. The biggest hurdle in the USA was and still is, to an extent, the other four big sports and the scholarship system at the universities. In comparison to Germany or the other four top European leagues, it's much more difficult to plan a footballing career for yourself as a young man and their family. There are too many other lures to the other four big sports, because although they have salary caps there will be one or two more zeros on the contract. There's also the question of university scholarships and when you're 17 and get a scholarship offer at a university for four years that is something you really have to consider. Take the example of Tyler Adams. Tyler appeared on my radar at 16 or 17 when he was in the youth system at NY Red Bulls. He was someone like Joshua Kimmich, who we've already spoken about, who already had the exceptional mentality to want to be the best version of Tyler Adams the footballer he could be. He wouldn't be dissuaded of that, it was in his blood, and it was clear to us that he would become a leading player in the MLS. It was also clear to us that the next step for him was to go to Leipzig and that he didn't need an intermediate step on the way. That has proven to be correct, but now as before he's an exception."

bundesliga.com: What stands out about Tyler Adams?

Rangnick: "We spoke about Joshua earlier and Tyler is the same; he has an unbelievable will to win. He wants to win every match and every training game. He wants to improve and listens. He's never satisfied. He always strives for improvement and in terms of his tactical understanding, I prefer to see him in central midfield because then he's at the heart of the action. I don't like to see him out wide, although he can do that well and that makes him valuable to the team and to Julian. I see him similarly to Joshua Kimmich, in central midfield as a six or an eight. He has now started to score and create a few goals and I see his potential as being very high, the sky is the limit. As long as he maintains his mentality, and he won't lose it, I don't see any limits."

bundesliga.com: Why does the Bundesliga represent such a good opportunity for North-American players? Is it because they get game-time here?

Rangnick: "It's not always the case and [Alphonso] Davies is another exception, because like Tyler he's in a different league. There aren't many in the world who are better in his position, so he would probably have broken through anywhere. Of course, he had to be given the opportunity though and needs a coach who will do that. Hansi Flick did that. He didn't play much under Nico Kovac, only once Hansi Flick took over. It always depends on you being at the right club at the right time under the right coach. That wasn't any different for Tyler Adams. He was given the chance in his first half-season to play, when I was coach. I still don't expect there to be a great number of players coming over, due to issues I outlined earlier in the MLS. I think the average budget is about seven or eight million dollars, which is comparable to a third division team in Germany. I only expect that to change substantially when the budgets change in equal measure, but I don't see that as likely at the moment. The players who you just listed off did everything right. They moved to the right clubs to develop their careers. What a lot of Americans share is that spirit and that winning mentality. The need to further one's own development. What they generally don't have is the ego to start putting themselves above the good of the team. That's something all the players I've come across have shared. What was the one called who we had who is now playing at Halle? No, not [Gio] Reyna? He is an exceptional talent though. Terrence Boyd, exactly. Reyna should be counted among the three exceptional ones. Terrence Boyd was limited technically and in the footballing sense, but he had a fantastic mindset."