He was nothing special as a player!

WHEN Paul Ifill sent his dad the Southwick FC 1979-80 team photo this week there was a name among them that Everton Ifill could remember but couldn’t quite place.

Which one was Ralf Rangnick, the godfather of German football management and incoming interim at Manchester United, then only a skinny 21-year-old foreign student at Sussex University.

Was that him... the serious-looking young man squatting on the front row, second in from the right, with a thatch of curly hair and with his elbows in his knees?

There were 13 lads on the photo. Everton could name 10 of them. He phoned around a few of the ones he still knew, the ones still with us. They came to the consensus, yes, that was Rangnick.

It comes as no surprise that there’s been a buzz between the old Southwick FC boys, the ones who were a missed penalty on the final day away from winning the Sussex County League. The team photo passed around, memories of that quiet German lad exchanged.

Only there aren’t that many. It’s 40 years ago for starters but, more than anything, there’s not much to remember. Little about the slight midfielder stood out, other than his politeness and dedication.

‘He worked hard but he was nothing outstanding,’ Ifill, father to former Millwall and Crystal Palace forward Paul, tells The Mail on Sunday. ‘It was difficult for him. I was the only black player in the side so I was in a similar sort of position. But he came from a different culture but it didn’t put him off, he worked his nuts off.’

In a team full of ex-pros, Rangnick played just 11 first-team games in the season. His debut a 3-3 draw with Steyning Town in front of a crowd of 154.

He was not helped by receiving a tackle in one of his early games that he fractured three ribs and punctured a lung. ‘One of those robust challenges you were allowed to do in those days,’ fellow team-mate Adrian Batchelor says. Rangnick was in hospital for three weeks.

However painful the experience, it was yet

another lesson for Rangnick on his way to becoming one of the most influential football minds of our time.

David Plant was Southwick’s centre-half and, after every match and every training session, Rangnick would drive him home. They spoke about football. ‘He was extremely fit and a big thinker,’ Plant says. ‘He talked like a coach.’

Batchelor, a right back in those days, remembers an old player profile of Rangnick’s that the club published this week. ‘It’s telling,’ he says. ‘One question asked for his ambition. Next to it, Rangnick wrote, “Pro Football” not, “Pro Footballer”,’ says Batchelor. ‘It was like he discovered very quickly that he was meant to be a coach.’

Rangnick has always reflected fondly on his time in Southwick. When the club folded in March last year, he donated £1000 to one of the phoenix clubs as they strive to return to their old home on Old Barn Way.

If Southwick do come home, Rangnick will have played his part. And there will be a few old faces who would love to see him again.

‘In life, you tend to remember the nice guys and the d ******* ,’ reflects Bachelor. ‘Ralf was certainly one of the nice guys.’