You think you invented football, do you?,” Bayer Leverkusen manager Roger Schmidt yelled at 29-year-old Hoffenheim manager Julian Nagelsmann during his side’s 3-0 loss in a late October Bundesliga match. The accusation, which resulted in a two-match suspension for the Leverkusen manager, was particularly incisive considering the source. Schmidt was seen as the next great soccer revolutionary after taking over Levrekusen side two seasons ago. Instead, Leverkusen’s struggles this season (13 points in 9 matches) and Nagelsmann’s success since taking over Hoffenheim last season (they have the third most points in the Bundesliga during that time) show how quickly the soccer world, especially in Germany, changes from year to year and coaching prodigy to coaching prodigy.

This wasn’t Schmidt’s first time getting suspended from the touchline. He received a five-match ban for refusing to leave the field last season against Dortmund. He was publicly reprimanded by the Leverkusen board for his latest dustup with Nagelsmann. As with most brilliance, Schmidt toes the thin line between pressing genius and madness. It will be a shame if his off field behavior overshadows his tactical innovations. 

Suspensions aside, Schmidt also faces an unfamiliar struggle this season in league play. 2016 represents his third season at Leverkusen, and we can reference Pep Guardiola’s theory of a manager being effective for only three or four years before their squad stops improving. We can sketch out a rough timeline: the first season is for weeding out players who don’t fit a specific approach. The second season, after a summer recruiting the right players, is dedicated to shaping a team as they begin to understand and succeed. Somewhere in the next two seasons, the core group of players grow older, key players leave the club, opponents continue to innovate, and our manager eventually runs out of ideas. 

Schmidt’s core ideas remain imprinted on this current Leverkusen side. There’s the 4-2-2-2 pressing shape with strikers and midfielders cutting off space in middle of the field and setting traps when the opposition plays wide. At its best, the defensive overloads and quick transitions overwhelms opponents. It was particularly effective in an early season match against Dortmund in which Thomas Tuchel started with three center backs in an effort to outnumber Leverkusen’s press in building possession. 

Instead, the change disrupted the rhythm of his Dortmund side and displayed Schmidt’s strength in forcing opponents into an unfamiliar game. Leverkusen’s 21 fouls and five yellow cards in the match drew criticism from Tuchel for being too physical. Regardless, Schmidt won the match before it was played. Granted, teams with a variety of styles, and the quality to pull it off - like last season’s Bayern Munich side with Xabi Alonso’s diagonal passes bypassing the press - have found success against Schmidt. But to battle Leverkusen head on comes at the expense of entertainment. An analysis of their recent match against Tottenham in Champions League understatedly described the center of midfield as hectic and scrappy. At its most cynical, Schmidt’s side fail to achieve anything resembling soccer.

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The 2013 soccer documentary Trainer! (currently available on Netflix) tracks the plight of three managers navigating the second and third divisions of German soccer. Each of Andre Schubert, Stephan Schmidt and Frank Schmidt, and their respective teams, hit a period of matches in which they struggle for results. The common refrain from the players, to the manager, to board members (in varying degrees) is that firing a manager in the middle of a season is a short sided move and it’s best to bet on the current manager making necessarily adjustments. Which of the three managers actually survive the season is key to the suspense of the documentary. 

Which brings us to Leverkusen’s current domestic struggles in a season that Stefan Kiessling described as the the worst he’s seen in his 10 seasons with the club. The Leverkusen board must determine if the side’s form is due to selling off key players, or if Schmidt’s hard line style has taken the club as far as it can go. Perspective, and looking at Schmidt’s resume, brings us to the former conclusion. You would rather bet on Leverkusen eventually getting results over the alternative of finding a new manager and starting back at the beginning.

Schmidt has a foundational group of players to lean on. Alongside strikers Kiessling and Chicharito, there’s Charles Aranguiz, Lars Bender, Julian Brandt, Karim Bellarabi, Kevin Kampl, and Hakan Calhanoglu in midfield, each fitting the pressing style demanded of the position. Schmidt lost Son Heung-min, Gonzalo Castro and Emre Can in the last two seasons, but each player was adequately replaced by the players named above. If there is any blame on transfers, striker Kevin Volland has yet to live up to his price tag with zero goals in five domestic matches. Integrating new players to a squad is as vital to a manager’s success as high pressing tactics, particularly when a player costs $22 million and is relied upon for goals.   

Jurgen Klopp plays a voice of reason in Trainer! in providing perspective in the face of high expectations. Schmidt said he’s inspired by Klopp’s overall coaching acumen, from the bravery of his style to how he develops a squad. Despite how his time ended at Dortmund, in judging Klopp’s remake of Liverpool both on and off the field in less than a year, there is no doubting his managerial quality. Yet the Liverpool manager’s final season in Germany may unwittingly illuminate Schmidt’s struggles at Leverkusen this season, with each manager milking their side down to its very last pressing inch with nowhere else to turn.

For all the underlying statistics of pressing and running we associate with Schmidt’s time at Leverkusen, results are the single number that matters. An overarching theme in Trainer! is that football is a black and white business. With that in mind, Leverkusen currently sit mid-table, with matches against RB Leipzig and Bayern Munich upcoming this month. Schmidt is the current frontrunner as the replacement for Arsene Wenger at Arsenal. Relationships between managers and clubs don’t last forever. As Frank Schmidt reminds us in the final speech of Trainer! after another emotional season in the German third division, when one side wins, another side loses. That’s what makes soccer fascinating, no matter what side you’re on.