The Interview: Consultant Jasmine Baba

The Germany-Based Consultant and Tactics Guru on Ralf Rangnick to Man United, How Good Bayern Munich Really Is and Her Own Unique Story

Twitter actually has some positive aspects, and one of the biggest ones is becoming aware of new talents in the soccer world. That’s how I learned about Jasmine Baba, a Germany-based soccer consultant and tactics guru. She joined me for a thoroughly enjoyable conversation about Ralf Rangnick joining Manchester United, her thoughts on Germany storylines and tactical trends, her own unique story and much more. I think you’ll really enjoy this discussion, which is lightly edited for clarity.

Grant Wahl:

Our guest now comes to us from Frankfurt, Germany. Jasmine Baba is a football consultant, fixer and tactics analyst. Jasmine, it's great to see you. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

Jasmine Baba:

Thank you for bringing me on. I'm looking forward to discussing topics today.

Grant Wahl:

There is a lot to discuss, and we'll get to it in one second. I just want to start, though, by asking you, what do you do for a living when someone asks you that question?

Jasmine Baba:

So on the record, my job title translates to scientific researcher. And I just want to clarify, I'm nothing of the sort. I'm not scientific. I do research, yes, but not in the same way as someone may think so. It's really vague, so I do a lot of things. I'm a jack of all trades. So for my job, I mostly do tactical analyst reports and also some scouting reports. And also that includes stuff like research into contracts, contract dates. We are really looking for good fits for clubs and individuals, but I also do this on more of a consulting side. So seeing if an individual fits a club or vice versa, and also tactical reports around there.

Grant Wahl:

Okay, it's really interesting. Do you work for a lot of different clubs? Do you work for a small number of entities, how does that work?

Jasmine Baba:

It's basically, I get given a brief, and then I will go and fill out a brief and it could be for a club, it could be for media, it could be for individuals all around that type. But for my consulting, I only work with individuals, and individuals I know well, because that's the only way I can work with people in that sort of way. I'm a very different character in the football industry. So I'd like to work for people who I know on that side.

Grant Wahl:

How did you get to Germany?

Jasmine Baba:

So I've always loved football, and everyone told me I could write pretty well about the game itself. I've always written here and there about football for around the last 10 years or so. And I loved analysis, but I couldn't really always write what I saw. I've always liked the words. And I was an editor at the time in England, and it was sports editor, but it was mostly football, but I always wanted to go just into football. And it wasn't until the first lockdown I started to learn more about the analysis side, how professionals do it. And I could quickly see patterns. My brain works in a way that if I see a pattern, I remember it, and it turns out I'm quite good at tactical analysis for that reason. So it was really easy to learn from how professionals learn about phases of the game, aspects such as triggers, position, tactics, formations, you name it.

And the next I did was started to network. There were a few people who followed me because of the writing I had done before and some more articles. I started to nail that down a bit more, especially in stats and technical analysis. And I realized that around July, August, because I was becoming really restless in the UK, I was going towards the more journalistic side, but I was questioning myself to say, "Oh, am I actually up for this? Am I really doing this?" And it turns out, no, I wasn't. It didn't feel right, and even though I was getting offered roles in reporting, I just didn't feel like that was the right way to go. And a lot of avenues from there closed down. It wasn't as much I was going to be making, it wasn't really what I wanted to be doing. So I started to walk towards what I was doing before in analysis.

And most of the contacts I had, including my boyfriend, were German, and I had this thought that I could start myself over in Germany. And I was kind of rushed to a decision because of Brexit was coming later that year. And I was like, if I don't do this now, I probably won't be able to in a couple of months. And I've never really looked back, because the work culture here is a lot better. I feel that female representation and POC representation in football here, it's a lot more clearer. You see it on the benches more, especially in the first three leagues. So yeah, I just never looked back from that point.

Grant Wahl:

That's awesome. Congrats.

Jasmine Baba:

Thank you.

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Grant Wahl:

I'm always fascinated by German football culture. I've spent a fair amount of time there over the years, and we'll get into a little bit more your story a little bit later on here, but I do want to get into some specifics because we actually have news breaking essentially as we record this on Friday, that Ralf Rangnick, I don't know if he's been officially announced yet to Manchester United, but as interim manager in what sounds a little bit like he might be like a director of football or at least a very influential figure after the interim manager part. And Ralf Rangnick is such an influential figure in German football and coaching over the last 20, 30 years. What are your thoughts on this?

Jasmine Baba:

I honestly thought, I'm trying not to laugh, I'm trying to be serious, but I honestly thought that Manchester United weren't that smart. If we're being honest, if we look at their last few years, the way that they've handled managers that could have been good, the way that they tried to find a fit, but never could. We know that their problems go past the manager, they need a complete restructure.

And if you want someone to do that, it's someone like Ralf Rangnick that you want to give it to who's built the RB global brand by himself. Starting with RB Salzburg back in, I think 2011. And to be honest, it could be very good if it's to be believed that he does six months as an interim manager and then given director of football, something like sporting director and how much freedom the Man United board and the Glazers will actually give him to restructure that club. So it could be very good, but if anyone knows how explosive Ralf Rangnick can be, it can either go very good or very bad very quickly. So we'll see.

Grant Wahl:

Yeah, that's what is fascinating about this prospect to me is this is a figure who wants control. Who wants to have an enormous influence on whatever project he's working on and will have extracted I would guess the promises from Man United officials that he can do this, but if it does not go the way he wants it to, then yeah, it does feel like it could blow up potentially. I almost feel like this could be spectacularly successful or a spectacular failure.

Jasmine Baba:

Honestly, there is no in-between with him. If we see the six months he had in his second spell at Schalke, they beat Inter Milan in the Champions League in the quarterfinals and then met Man United in the semifinals, got beat by them. But to get that team into the semifinals of the Champions League, I think it was with Raúl at the time as well. And then they also won the DFB Pokal. That was massive. That's one of the titles he's won as a coach.

So he shows that he can do it in a short space of time as an interim manager, so that could even be good for Man United Champions League latter stages. But the big problems I can see is, obviously if he moves up to director of football, if the Glazers give him freedom to restructure the club, but as an interim manager, if everyone will back his decisions that could be unconventional. If [Cristiano] Ronaldo does not work for him and work in the structure that he lays down, he will bench him. He will bench [Paul] Pogba, he will bench Ronaldo. He is willing to take those risks. It's if everyone around him is so willing to do so.

Grant Wahl:

I do think also too, if you could explain a little bit of what Rangnick's philosophy is, because it's a very distinct one. A lot of our listeners are American, maybe aren't totally familiar with his history and how he's influenced other top managers today. And also even some Manchester United fans, judging from my Twitter responses yesterday, were like, "Why should we hire this guy if he's with Lokomotiv Moscow?" Stuff like that. But if you could explain a bit more about Rangnick and his philosophy.

Jasmine Baba:

So over here, his nicknamed as The Professor, it was given to him as a term of sarcasm. At the time he was coach in 99 or 98, 99 with Ulm who were in the third tier of football over here. And it was basically after a TV interview with him where he kind of explained his tactics with a board and everything. So everyone took the mickey out of him basically, but he started to go from club to club, improving them, getting them promoted to a point where it was, we cannot not look at this guy anymore in terms of choosing him for our future. So he got promoted with Hannover and he had a short spell with Stuttgart that was so short he couldn't really do anything. I think he got them into the UEFA Cup at the time, but then also finished 16th, so was sacked.

And then he started doing the Schalke role. It's normally short-lived roles that he has done and it wasn't until after that Schalke role, RB asked him to build up their club and his philosophy, and he's taken this with him from club to club. He likes to be very aggressive. Thinks it's more about tactics and the man-coaching rather than their technical ability almost. So if they're prepared to press up high, make sure you win the ball, no backwards passing as we've seen.

As the very well keyword buzzword is thrown around tiki-taka, it's kind of the opposite. It's making sure you win the ball back, press high, the kind of explosive counterattacking football that we know and love. And in his time, and in his jobs, he's taught so many great managers. We've seen Thomas Tuchel, I'll go through the English ones first because they'll all be in the same league now. So Thomas Tuchel is a student. Jürgen Klopp is a student, Ralph Hasenhuttl is a student. And then you've also got Julian Nagelsmann, Jesse Marsch, both back in Germany, all adapting his style. All using his style and how they've become such great managers is from him.

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Grant Wahl:

It's interesting though, because one of the storylines with Leipzig this season under Jesse Marsch, the American coach, has been it's been a departure from Nagelsmann tactics when he was there last year. And the way Marsch has sort of explained it is, and this is from his perspective, is that it's more about like a pure Red Bull philosophy in his mind in terms of press, press, press, that he feels like Nagelsmann last year got away from that a little bit. There was more possession, more positional play. Who's more like Rangnick, Marsch or Nagelsmann?

Jasmine Baba:

I would definitely say Marsch in terms of actual play, you're completely correct there. And it's a reason why RB Leipzig is struggling so much this season. It's the change and the transition from going back to that more possessional and using positional play compared to that RB blueprint of the aggressive press, the speed, having all this energy all this time, and it's really hard to go and play two years under a possessional-based style football and change that and ramp it up. Especially if you don't really buy the players for it, or the players aren't ready for it. And that is definitely one of the reasons why Leipzig have not really been the Leipzig we've seen of the last two years. So yeah, that is definitely a problem for them as a whole right now and where they want to go in the future.

Grant Wahl:

And I guess if I would carry over how you're seeing this Leipzig transition this season and the challenges they've had to Manchester United and what they're about to now experience under Rangnick, do you see him being sort of like full Rangnick? Like, this is how we're going to do it, and do you see Ronaldo, who’s like the most obvious example, I guess, do you see him trying to play this way at the start, or do you see him bristling and being like, "Nah, that's not me at this point, I'm in my '30s, you see my stats, I don't run."

Jasmine Baba:

I think, the good thing about Rangnick and Ronaldo is that they're both winners. And I think that might be the way you convert Ronaldo to that style or even try. His time of doing this might be limited. It might be that you use him for 60 minutes instead of the full 90, if you want to play this way. Can it also go the other way, do I think Ronaldo might not be up for it in the same way? Possibly, I think there might even be bigger problems than Ronaldo. I think there might be a problem with the likes of Harry Maguire, who everyone has picked on in the last few games. It's wondering if those types of characters, the more error-prone types of characters, can actually keep up with this intensity, really. And if they are going to make mistakes, trying to rush out and try this new style, but yeah, you can see the kind of teething problems there. But I wonder if it's actually better for the majority of Man United players.

Grant Wahl:

Interesting. Well, let's talk a little bit more about Germany this season, and I'm wondering what are some of the storylines that are most standing out to you in Germany?

Jasmine Baba:

Oh, I'm getting a bit bored by it, because it's mainly COVID, it's something to do with COVID. The last week or two, we've probably had the biggest scandal in German football since maybe the match-fixing between Paderborn and Hamburg of 2004 or Christoph Daum's cocaine use of the early 2000s as well. All of those, okay, the match-fixing one, it actually affects other people. Daum's one affected himself, but Markus Anfang, the now ex-coach of Werder Bremen, using a fake vaccination passport is huge. It's been going on for weeks after we've had the headlines of which players have been vaccinated, which haven't.

Once Germany moves its rules to recovered or vaccinated, who's going to be affected by the rules. And we had just had a month of that basically. So from a month of that, up until a football coach has used a fake vaccination passport and got found out, those are the main storylines, which is kind of sad because if we get such great things in German football, it's always like a title race, it's always quite close until the end of the season, and we always get some sort of innovation in football that someone else is trying to use a new tactic or something. But this season just been solid COVID big storylines.

Grant Wahl:

There's also the Bayern Munich situation with COVID in the sense of Joshua Kimmich as a guy who's come out at one point saying he wasn't vaccinated. More recently he's gotten COVID. A couple other players with Bayern Munich as well. And from what I'm reading, the club feels like they can actually dock the pay of players for when they're suspended or are not available due to COVID reasons. Can they really do that?

Jasmine Baba:

I believe so. In the state of Bayer, there is legislation that says that if you miss work through quarantine that you could have avoided from being vaccinated, your employer is allowed to keep pay. So this is a move that Bayern Munich has also taken to try and encourage players to be vaccinated. It seemed to have worked with the conversations about their pay and also the fact that they need to recognize the kind of state Germany and Europe is in right now. If Kimmich didn't catch COVID and we were a week ago, the state of NRW wanted to go 2G in their stadiums, and Dortmund say we are having 2G in our stadiums, and unvaccinated players can't play, I think a lot of players will be quite frustrated if they weren't vaccinated to miss out on a game like that.

So it's just understanding the situation, as well as the legal implications that could make them lose their pay on top. So it seemed to be really good discussions. There was five unvaccinated players, and out of those five, including [Serge] Gnabry and [Jamal] Musiala, who both decided to get vaccinated, having their first dose. Musiala was a bit harder for him because he was obviously 17. I think once the vaccination rollout started, I think his one was just more a time sensitive issue more than anything. And it sounded like [Eric Maxim] Choupo-Moting and Kimmich as well were also looking to get vaccinated, but unfortunately COVID actually got them at the moment. It's very, very important that those kind of rules and those kind of understandings and conversations have to take place, otherwise they need to understand how big they might lose from missing out on being vaccinated, missing games, and obviously their pay.

Grant Wahl:

And just about Bayern Munich in specific terms here, do they seem like a team that can win the Champions League this season to you? Are there big questions that you have about this Bayern team right now?

Jasmine Baba:

Funnily, the biggest question over Bayern is the COVID situation. And now the other two of the players want to get vaccinated. And the other two now have COVID, which means that in German terms in German legal Corona protocol terms, they're basically covered for six months, this is before the new variants. So I will stop it there. That's the biggest question I had over them. Their stats, their underlying numbers, the way that they play, all improved on last season. They're blowing teams out of the water. No one comes close.

The closest that someone comes, I think is Mainz because Mainz weirdly don't concede many big chances, which is why we're seeing this weird kind of merge of the top four. You've got Freiburg nearby and Mainz nearby. No one comes close to Bayern, and if you compare the table results to last season, they were one point behind Leverkusen last year. Christmas two years ago, Gladbach were top and Bayern was third, two points or one point away. So they've actually improved, but it's not in the way people think, or people have short memories that they think, oh, they're only one point ahead. It's going to be a title race season, when really they're doing better than normal. And people haven't realized that yet. So yeah, now that they look like COVID is going to be done for them because it gets through their team, now they'll probably be better protected than other teams come later this season.

Grant Wahl:

Interesting. Whether it's Germany or Europe in general, are there any particular new tactical trends you're seeing lately that you find particularly interesting?

Jasmine Baba:

I think tactical trends, to be fair, I've picked this up on Germany, maybe a little bit in England too, but last season we had a very dominant 4-2-3-1 formation, and what we're seeing this season is a lot more teams line up with two clear strikers. I think the reason for this was because the one type of team those 4-2-3-1s couldn't break down was anyone with a back three/five, and it was harder for them to do it. So teams were looking for more efficient ways to break those teams down, and those trends to actually come into the making are slow to develop. And the way about breaking down those back three/fives is always to go down a two-striker route, because two strikers pressing a back three, it's easier to press them as they build up. And one of the clearest formations and tactical trends I’m seeing go that route is people turn their 4-2-3-1 into a four diamond two.

We saw it a bit with Dortmund earlier this season before they reverted to a 4-3-3, we're seeing it with St. Pauli as well in the Second Bundesliga, I know St. Pauli is a favorite. It's probably a favorite everywhere whoever's listening.

Grant Wahl:

I love them.

Jasmine Baba:

See I knew even you were a St. Pauli fan. St. Pauli fans are everywhere outside of Germany. So yeah, you can actually see this kind of trend that more people are lining up with two strikers to break that down. But I think formations and tactics, I normally look at the majority of Germany because now it's what I know, and if I watch a different team from a different league, I switch off that part, my brains have no idea what anyone else is doing [laughs].

Grant Wahl:

So we're wrapping up here with Jasmine Baba, really appreciate you taking this much time. And I think one thing we like to do, a lot of our audience actually are students who want to get into the business, whether it's the soccer business, the media business, what have you. And so I always ask guests what suggestions or advice would you have for someone who wants to do what you do? And also, if you could just share a little bit about how this got started with you and soccer, because it's not a huge insight. You're one of just a very few women doing what you do, as well. And obviously we'd love to have more women doing what you do.

Jasmine Baba:

I get this asked all the time and I always really think about it now. I don't know how I end up anywhere. I'm still pinching myself because it's only been the last year. I've really committed myself to doing this. If anyone who knows me knows that I don't have a degree, I dropped out of university. I worked retail for five years. I worked in the gambling industry for another four before going to more editorial in the gambling industry, which is sports, that side. And it's not only a woman thing, it's also a person of color. I'm a woman of color, I'm neurodivergent. So it's like diversity across the board for me would be great. And I think people really downplay networking and finding people who will back you. I've had so many contacts or friends who don't share the same enthusiasm I do with other friends who are trying to make something of themselves.

It can be as little as sharing your articles or sharing your research, passing on contacts, passing on jobs, giving feedback. I get loads of people tweeting me to read their stuff, and I try and get through them all. It's hard when you have ADHD and you just read the first paragraph again and again. So if I get through it, please thank me [laughs] because I found it really hard to. But find those people who will do that for you as well. Find people that are on the same wavelength. Everyone talks about the beauty of social media, but that's what I've had to do. I've not had any other way. If you write about interesting stuff and you keep it regular, you will find people, people will be interested in the work that you do. And I think that is probably the biggest one. That is literally how I got to meet so many wonderful people. It's how I got to meet my fiance. And those people will prop you up and help you get where you want to be.

It's just, I had so many incredible role models. Some of my jobs made me lucky to find people in media and content, but you have to find those people who can work with you. I showed people what I could do and what I could do for them, and for some people it would be harder because they don't even know where to start from that. There's so much incredible free data, if you want to start analyzing games, go to youth games, go to women's games, the cheaper ones, cheaper tickets that you can just be at ground level and analyze it yourself. Someone out there will be interested in what you do, so just keep doing it. As long as it's not like terribly niche, actually even niche stuff on Twitter, now people will read about it. So just make sure you shout about what you do and what you can offer, and you will find people, I promise.

Grant Wahl:

No, that's really helpful. Appreciate you sharing. And what's your football origin story? How old were you when you got into it? How did that happen?

Jasmine Baba:

I was very young, and I'm the youngest of four. And all my siblings were quite a bit older, from eight to 13 years. And so if I was doing anything with my older siblings, if it was a weekend, the radio would be on talking about the Arsenal match. It was always constant. And it was always a constant in my life. It was the one thing that I bonded over with other people throughout my years in high school. And it never went away, and I've had so many different, not abilities, but different interests at that time, but football was constant because it reminded me of my family. So it was from 18 where I thought, oh, I can write on the side. I will just start my own little blog. And I've gone through like five different blogs, deleting them, changing my ideas every time.

And it wasn't until when I started working in the gambling field and again, my editing field that I started to take it a little more seriously, that people would read me. I've done volunteer work of writing for other bigger sites before, which, I appreciate not everyone will be able to do, but if you even get one with a slightly bigger following, if you're just starting out, that will give you a bit of leverage, just don't over-commit to something that's free and that won't give you something back. That's my only kind of takeaway from this, do not over-burn yourself on people who will not push you where you want to be and get you money to live.

Grant Wahl:

Well, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your thoughts and your story. Where can people find you on social media?

Jasmine Baba:

So on Twitter, I'm at @jasmine_bh1. In my bio there's a link to some of the tactical analysis stuff that I do as a hobby. You can find me on one of my articles every month on DW Sports as well, and on Instagram you can also find me at @ _jasminebabahahn.

Grant Wahl:

Awesome. Jasmine Baba is a football consultant, fixer and tactics analyst. Jasmine, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Jasmine Baba:

Thank you for having me.