Ralf Rangnick has potentially opened the door for Harry Maguire to lose his captain's armband at Manchester United after explaining a new way the incoming Erik ten Hag could choose to elect his skipper.
The former Lokomotiv Moscow Sporting Director has been at the helm of the Red Devils since December of last year, during which time the form of Maguire has drastically declined and seen many fans and pundits alike call for him to be stripped of his role as captain.
Rangnick has stood firm and kept Maguire on as club captain, ignoring shouts for the responsibility to go a more experienced teammate like Cristiano Ronaldo. With that being said, the central defender was taken out of the firing line for the recent visit to Arsenal.
The constant speculation surrounding who would replace Rangnick has finally been put to bed with the confirmation that Ajax boss Ten Hag would take over from the end of this season. While there will be plenty waiting for the Dutchman in his in-tray, what to do with Maguire will rank pretty high on the to-do list.
Rangnick was asked what advice he would give Ten Hag when it comes to the constant spotlight on the United captaincy and opted to shed light on a common way of electing a skipper in Germany that could be deployed at Old Trafford next season.
"I can only tell what I have done in the past when I was the head coach or the manager, because in Germany it’s called match kapitan, so the captain of the team," United's interim explained. "I strongly believe that the captain should be elected by the team because he’s called the team manager, and we always did that.
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"We always had a board of four or five players, we called it the spielkapitan, elected by the players, the player with the highest amount of votes was the team captain at the end. That’s how I did it, I know that not a lot of head coaches do it that way."
Should Ten Hag see fit to strip Maguire of the armband, he could do so via Rangnick's method of shifting the onus onto the players and re-appointing the club captain to whichever player is the most popular pick within the dressing room.
At times this season, there had been rumours that Maguire had lost the trust of certain sections of the squad as captain and many see Ronaldo a more suitable leader. However, with speculation mounting over the 37-year-old's future, Maguire may still cling on to the armband for now.
