So on Thursday night, we travel to Germany and Leipzig to be precise.
There we will be playing literally the most unpopular team in the country.
Why you may ask when Bayern Munich have been sweeping all before them for years now without any significant resistance?
Well Bayern, unlike our hosts have a real history unlike Leipzig, a club literally manufactured by the Austrian based soft drinks company Red Bull in 2009 after they purchased fifth tier German side SSV Markranstädt – or their licenses at least, it’s all a little confusing as a team called SSV Markranstädt continued to operate as an affiliate of the new entity – and from there the team we now know as RasenBallsport Leipzig e.V., was born and play in, you guessed it, the Red Bull Arena.
Most clubs in Germany are of course still primarily fan owned with the sale of significant never mind controlling share interests to large corporations or wealthy individuals generally discouraged as not being in sync with the culture of fan representation on club boards. It’s known as the 50+1 ownership rule and has led to Borussia Dortmund having 15,000 members. RB Leipzig, on the other hand, has just 17 and their ability to circumnavigate the rules has unsurprisingly led to other clubs, Bayern being chief amongst them, to call for the rule to be scrapped so that significant investment can be brought in.
The 50+ 1 rule states that: “No single person or entity may possess more than 49% of the voting rights in a German club’s professional football division, preventing the sale of a majority stake to outside investors, protecting clubs from irresponsible owners and maintaining the democratic nature of fan-owned German clubs.”
Despite this a quarter of Bundesliga clubs currently don’t follow the 50+1 rule to the letter, while some clubs have been granted certain exemptions. However, Leipzig really is the black sheep as they have pretty much discarded the rule altogether.
For more info on all of this, I’ve embedded a video at the bottom of the page featuring a short documentary on RasenBallsport Leipzig’s controversial origins from Copa90.
In the nine seasons since Red Bull created their own footballing Frankenstein, they have won the fifth tier German league – aka NOFV-Oberliga Süd- in their maiden season and then spent two seasons in the fourth tier Regionalliga Nord failing to gain promotion in each one with fourth and third place finishes respectively.
It then moved to another regional fourth-tier league the Regionalliga Nordost – God only knows why – which it won with an undefeated campaign in 2012-2013, hence promotion to 3. Liga which you won’t be surprised to hear is the third tier of German football.
It finished runners-up in its first season there leading to promotion to 2. Bundesliga and the top flight was now in sight.
The 2014-15 season saw them finish only fifth but they bounced back the following term to finish runners-up and with that, they had finally gained promotion to the hallowed Bundesliga within seven seasons, one less than Red Bull had originally targeted when they launched the new club back in 2009.
Much to every other German supporter’s chagrin outside of their own, they made quite the impact in their first top-flight season spectacularly finishing runners-up to runaway leaders Bayern whom they had now replaced as the nations most loathed footballing entity due to their somewhat artificial beginnings.
Last season was a bit of a reality check for them though as they dropped to sixth in the division however this was of course still enough to deliver them a Europa League place.
And now to this season which is of course what concerns us the most.
They are managed by veteran Ralf Rangnick who’s been in the coaching game for over 30 years, all of which has been spent in his native Germany.
He actually managed them before back in 2015/16 when they gained promotion to the Bundesliga but was replaced by Ralph Hasenhüttl despite this success but got his own back in May of this year when Hasenhüttl left and now Ralf with an ‘f’ is back in the big chair.
They were hammered 4-1 at the Westfalen by Borussia Dortmund on Matchday One of the new season but have bounced back strongly with an undefeated run of seven games featuring four wins and three draws scoring fifteen – through six of them came in a 6-0 rout of FC Nürnberg – and conceding just four in the process and sit fifth in the division on 15 points.
In the Europa League, they have navigated through three rounds defeating Swedes BK Häcken 4-1 on aggregate, Romania’s CS Universitatea Craiova 4-2 over the two legs and in the playoff round they overcame Ukraine’s FC Zorya Luhansk 3-2 on aggregate.
Interestingly though they were undefeated in the qualifiers they never won a game on the road with three wins at home and three draws away. That gives us some hope for the home match but not much for Thursday night.
They were turned over 3-2 at home in the group match opener by their namesake Red Bull Salzburg.
2-0 down at one point they did come back to equal things up but fell to a late Fredrik Gulbrandsen strike for the visitors.
But Salzburg, as we know, are a team in incredible form this season having claimed 16 wins from 19 matches so far with no defeats in all competitions and 48 goals scored in the process so no shame in a tight 89th-minute loss to them.
We, of course, showed up pretty well against them in the opening 45 mins before being bulldozed in the second half.
Last time out in Europe Leipzig romped to a 3-1 win in Trondheim against Rosenborg, a team who as we experienced ourselves in the Champions League qualifiers are no slouches at home.
Young French striker Jean-Kévin Augustin gave them the lead after just 12 mins when he took down a cross-field pass at the edge of the box and swept it home. Incidentally, Augustin came through at PSG beside our very own Odsonne Edouard before moving to Saxony for some €13 million in the summer of 2017. The lead was doubled on 54 mins via 19-year-old French centre-back Ibrahima Konaté who stands a towering 6’4 but didn’t require his height to score as he smashed home a loose ball resulting from a corner. Another 19-year-old, Brazilian winger Matheus Cunha, then secured the points on 61 mins as he finished off a wonderful intricate passing move with a neat finish in the box and showed that the Germans are capable on the road despite only drawing in their three previous away European matches. Rosenborg scored with 12 mins to go but it was nothing but a consolation.
Anyway, aside from Leipzig’s form they also made some notable moves in the transfer market this summer. And it’ll be of no surprise to hear that like so many clubs that we come up against in Europe now they are on a totally different level from us financially.
This summer alone they spent €43 million on three players, defenders Marcelo Saracchi and Nordi Mukiele as well as striker Matheus Cunha. All are under 21 so they are definitely targetting youth with resale value, a similar policy to our own.
Uruguyuan Saracchi arrived from River Plate, Mukiele from Montpellier – where he’d made 50 league appearances in two seasons – and Brazilian Cunha from Swiss side FC Sion where he scored 10 league goals in 29 games last season.
They did, however, rake in €72.8 million primarily from the sale of star man Naby Keita to Liverpool (€60 million) along with Brazilian full-back Bernardo to Brighton for €10 million.
Another player they released was Israeli forward Omer Damari. He was a goal machine at club level in his native Israel but couldn’t hit a barn door in Germany failing to score once in his three-year stay there.
Their main men in the wake of the departure of Keita are Austrian internationalist Marcel Sabitzer who has weighed in with 23 goals from 106 games in midfield and the striking partnership of Danish internationalist Yussuf Poulsen and the star of the team, German internationalist striker Timo Werner.
Poulsen and Werner have 91 goals between them in the Red Bull colours as well as 50 international caps with Poulsen hitting the net six times already this season and Werner bagging four.
The 22-year-old Werner though is bound for bigger things and has struck 21 goals in each of the last two seasons. It’s actually a testament to Leipzig’s financial backing that they have been able to hold onto him for so long in the face of fierce competition for his signature.
One bit of bright news is that Swedish internationalist Emil Forsberg, who generally pulls the strings from the midfield, has been ruled out with a groin strain but one player does not a team make and despite his absence they still have pretty intimidating five-pronged threat of the aforementioned Augustin, Cunha, Poulsen, Werner and 23-year-old Portuguese winger Bruma who is also a bit tasty on his day.
I mean this would be a tough ask even on home turf but away it looks really difficult. Like, really, really difficult. Just our luck we have two teams in our group that just happen to be two of the form teams on the content right now.
We are of course inform ourselves hitting 10 in two matches but this is a huge jump in opposition and despite the likes of Forrest, Rogic, McGregor and Edouard currently being on fire I don’t think it would be smart to go toe to toe with them especially in their own stadium. Something similar to what we produced in the first 45 mins away to Salzburg but this time maintained for the full 90 mins will be required which seems more feasible with Filipe Benkovic back in for the hapless Jack Hendry.
Our away form in Europe is, of course, feeble to the point of being shockingly bad and I guess there’s no point in going over all of that again.
I felt similarly pessimistic for our away tie against another German side Borussia Mönchengladbach almost exactly two years ago and that turned out okay with an unexpected 1-1 draw which could have been even better if Callum McGregor had held his nerve with a gilt-edged chance in the dying embers.
Maybe Thursday evening will be the start of a bright new beginning for us on the road in the continent. I mean stranger things have happened. Right?
....Always A Tim! 