RB Leipzig will join Red Bull Salzburg in next season’s Champions League, leaving the drinks company’s CEO Dietrich Mateschitz with a big problemIn any professional sport, what could be more necessary than a rule preventing one person or organisation from owning two teams? The potential conflicts of interest are obvious. One team could be used to help the other by, for instance, rolling over when they met at a crucial point in the battle for a championship, or by obstructing a third party in order to favour a stablemate.Formula One used to have a rule like that, but it was a distant memory by the time Dietrich Mateschitz came along. The man who bought the recipe for a caffeine-based drink...
The players celebrated in front of their supporters, who had faced a raft of protest banners, one proclaiming their team to be the ‘gravediggers of football’Even before it all kicked off in Berlin, RB Leipzig were already in the mood. In the dressing room at the Olympiastadion on Saturday afternoon, the coach Ralph Hasenhüttl played his squad a video compilation of their season’s highlights, “with the Champions League anthem at the end” as outro music, as the midfielder Diego Demme later told journalists.It clearly had the desired effect. Leipzig simply overpowered the European hopefuls Hertha Berlin in a performance that was so finely honed that it was almost a caricature of their best qualities. They pressed Pal Dardai’s side like...
You won’t convince many BVB fans that Leipzig are good for football but on a tempestuous night at the Westfalenstadion they were good for their teamDie Gelbe Wand, the famous yellow wall, is never less than vocal but on Saturday it spoke loudest without the aid of air or lungs. As their Borussia Dortmund prepared to kick off the Bundesliga’s game of the weekend, against RB Leipzig, the banners came out – some big, some small, maybe 100 of them, maybe more. The strength of feeling that habitually emanates from Europe’s biggest standing terrace is well known, but this was something else.They all shared similar messages. “Bullen Schweine,” “Red Bull – Feind des Fussballs!” (“football’s enemy”), and even a few...
Leipzig’s exciting, young squad, like Hoffenheim in 2009, have made a fine start to life in the Bundesliga and so far look to be the real dealYou’d only expect it to happen once in a generation at best, not twice in a decade. RB Leipzig’s spectacular first half of the season is not without precedent, though. The parallels with the last promoted club from Bundesliga 2. to make their presence felt at the top-flight’s summit so immediately after promotion have come thick and fast – perhaps unsurprisingly, since Hoffenheim’s coach in their lightning start to their Bundesliga debut campaign of 2008-09 was Ralf Rangnick, who is now Leipzig’s sporting director, having guided the team to promotion last season. There’s plenty...
Winger feels public fury after his first-minute free fall led to a penalty which he converted to put the Bundesliga’s top team ahead against SchalkeThrough on goal straight after kick-off, Timo Werner scuffed his shot, then instinctively took his second chance – albeit in less style. He arched his back, let out a cry and threw himself to the ground, creating the impression that the Schalke 04 keeper Ralf Fährmann, who had actually done well to pull out of the challenge, had brought him down. The referee Sebastian Dankert fell for the phantom foul and awarded a penalty. The irate Fährmann was booked. Werner himself stepped up to slot home the spot kick coolly to put RB Leipzig 1-0 ahead....