From his position at the summit of the Bundesliga, and closing in on the 20th anniversary of his debut as a coach in European club competition, Carlo Ancelotti – manager at Bayern Munich – could be forgiven for thinking about retirement.
But he is only 57, and challenges remain. Not the least of which is to show that experience still has a value in a league when his peers, apparently, keep getting younger and more fresh faced.
In the top flight of German football, more than half the current occupants of the main seat in the dugout are 45 or younger. If Bayern made a deliberate and sensible decision to appoint Ancelotti for his well-proven knack of winning the biggest prize – the Uefa Champions League – when they needed to replace Pep Guardiola last year, the serial German champions know they will have a wide cast to choose from should their post-Ancelotti plans require a native German with a long career-span ahead.
One name on their future agenda, it is widely reported, is Julian Nagelsmann.
Nagelsmann’s current job is in charge of Hoffenheim, the upwardly mobile provincial club who, going into this weekend, sat a point off the top four of the Bundesliga – and thus with Champions League qualification.
That in itself would be a remarkable achievement for an outfit of Hoffenheim’s size. It is more eye-catching still given their coach’s background.
Nagelsmann is 29 years old. No, that is not a misprint. He will only turn 30 in July, well after the end of what is shaping up as the most successful campaign in the history of a club who arrived in the top division for the first time in 2008.
He is not a caretaker manager, nor a short-term locum hurried into place between more worldly managers. This weekend Nagelsmann will celebrate a full calendar year in charge.
Quite a year it has been, too. Since Nagelsmann took over the first team in mid-February 2016, only Bayern – under first Guardiola, then Ancelotti – and Borussia Dortmund - under the youngish 43-year-old Thomas Tuchel – have performed better, of the clubs in the top flight across this season and last, than Nagelsmann’s Hoffenheim.
Given the relative resources of Dortmund and Bayern compared with little Hoffenheim, that is a coup.
Hoffenheim’s leading scorer is the uncapped journeyman Sandro Wagner. Their star? None, really. Or none more than Nagelsmann.
Hoffenheim, whose rise up the German football pyramid owes greatly to the backing of billionaire businessman Dietmar Hopp, had identified the tall, blond Nagelsmann as a potential managerial high achiever when he was in his mid 20s.
His playing career had been cut short by a knee injury at 20 and the club he was attached to at the time – Augsburg – kept him on as a scout, reporting, for a time, to Tuchel, who then encouraged him to coach the Under 17s at 1860 Munich.
He then became a Hoffenheimer, and had worked his way up to coaching their U19s three years ago, guiding that team to the Bundesliga age-group championship.
The club boldly felt him ready to prepare for the first team job, and announced last autumn he would become their manager, for 2016/17, in succession to the veteran Huub Stevens.
The plan altered when Stevens stepped down suddenly following a health problem. Nagelsmann’s fast track to the top became even faster.
There was scepticism – a “publicity stunt”, one German newspaper called the appointment of a manager so young – and a crisis to greet him, with Hoffenheim threatened with relegation.
But he promptly won half his matches in charge in what remained of last season. Hoffenheim survived.
That they have positively thrived since has embellished his reputation as a fine motivator, even of players older than he is, and a shrewd, flexible tactician.
Hence the talk that Bayern are monitoring his progress. Nagelsmann barely listens to that sort of gossip, he says, determined to honour a contract that has more than two years to run.
"I have no career plan as such," he told Kicker magazine this week. "I do have a desire to win titles, but no plan about when that might be."
Player of the week: Memphis Depay
The Dutch winger turns 23 on Monday, and finds himself at a crossroads in a career that soared during his teenage years, but stalled at Manchester United over the last 18 months. He is now off the mark with Lyon, who he joined last month.
Shaky start Depay's first goal for the Ligue 1 club, the fourth in the 4-0 rout of Nancy in midweek, came as a relief. After two disappointing starts, both defeats for Lyon, supporters had begun to harbour doubts about Depay, from who the French club committed over €20 million (Dh78.1m) to United.
Long drought In his defence, Depay needed some time to be up and running. "It may take two or three months before we see him at his best," Lyon president Jean-Michel Aulas advised on presenting the Dutchman to supporters. "But we have an excellent player." A lack of opportunities at United had left him rusty. The goal against Nancy was his first in club football for almost a year.
Eredivisie Legacy So what happened to the player who outscored everybody else in the Dutch top flight only two seasons ago, hitting 22 goals towards PSV Eindhoven's seizing of the Eredivisie title? Those sceptical of the standards of Dutch club football would mark him down as one of the several examples of players who can score for fun in the Netherlands but then move on and find defences in other leagues harder to penetrate.
Brilliant in orange But it was not just his PSV showings that persuaded United to sign Depay in 2015, however. He had thrilled at the 2014 World Cup with the Netherlands under the watch of Louis van Gaal, the manager who then brought him to Manchester. And his assets are plenty. Great pace. The sort of close control that has had him likened to Arjen Robben and even Cristiano Ronaldo. And fine skills with a dead ball.
Hot competition If Depay had been top dog at PSV, at United he faced several challengers for a spot in the XI. Anthony Martial arrived in the same transfer window, for a huge fee. Marcus Rashford emerged as a striker of high potential. Depay receded in the hierarchy. He made more of what became a dwindling number of Premier League appearances as a substitute than as a starter, and the arrival of Jose Mourinho as Van Gaal's replacement did him no favours. Nor will Lyon show endless patience. A squad including the likes of Mathieu Valbuena, the gifted Nabil Fakir and finisher Alex Lacazette has restricted room up front. Depay cannot coast.
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