Tag: Leipzig

Europa League Preview: Red Bull Leipzig vs Celtic – What horrors await us in Saxony.

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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 SĂĽd- 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 HasenhĂĽttl despite this success but got his own back in May of this year when HasenhĂĽttl left and now Ralf with an ‘f’ is back in the big chair.

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That’s Ralf. 

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 NĂĽrnberg – 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-KĂ©vin 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 KonatĂ© 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.

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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?

 

Post-match analysis: Celtic 4 – 2 Hibs. That’ll be the crisis over then.

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What a game that was.

Celtic and Hibs played out what must be undoubtedly the game of the season on Saturday afternoon.

As expected ex-Celtic manager Neil Lennon set-up his team to attack and as a result, a very open and free-flowing game occurred with Celtic’s superior firepower seeing us emerge with three points in a spectacular end to end game.

In total there were 30 shots on goal between the two teams with 12 of those on target as well as 12 corners shared and Hibs even had 46% of possession which is highly unusual for a domestic team visiting Celtic Park.

But despite the stats looking fairly even the reality was that this would have been a travesty if Celtic had not emerged with the three points. Along with the four goals the Hoops hit the post three times and the opposition goalie Adam Bogdan had one of the games of his life.

Tom Rogic gave Celtic the lead as he played a one-two with Forrest, the man whose goals he had mostly helped conjure up at St.Johnstone a fortnight ago, and lashed a curling left-foot drive past Bogdan on eight mins, a goal highly reminiscent of his strike against Rangers at Ibrox in the 3-2 triumph last season.

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“How’s about that for a strike?”

Then on 19 minutes, Olivier Ntcham doubled the lead with a fine sweeping low finish from inside the box past Bogdan after a lovely pass from Rogic.

This was no more than Celtic deserved considering that in the first seven mins alone Edouard had crashed one off the post after chesting down a clipped cross to the back stick from McGregor and then McGregor himself nearly caught Bogdan off his line with a free-kick from distance just going over the bar.

Celtic really should have made it three and finished it off in the first half when Scott Sinclair cracked one off the post when it seemed easier to score after being the first to meet a save from Bogdan who had denied the oncoming Edourde. The rebound came to James Forrest but the less said about his attempted finish the better. Needless to say, he scuffed it a mile wide from close range.

With it all being such one-way traffic it was easy to forget that Hibs have actually been in great form this season but they served up a sharp reminder when ex-Celt Efe Ambrose floated a cross into the box that was met perfectly by Martin Boyle requiring Craig Gordon to produce a wonder save to put it past the post.

Into the second half and Hibs continued to threaten and credit where it is due as Florian Kamberi produced an absolutely wonderful finish from just inside the box to reduce his side’s deficit to 2-1.

Odsonne Edouard was determined not to be outdone though and rampaged forward, skinning three Hibs defenders in the process before his curling finish came back off the bottom off the past with Bogdan well beaten.

But any doubts it wasn’t going to be his day were erased when James Forrest burst down the left wing towards the byline, leaving Mark Milligan in his wake before cutting back for Edouard to finally deliver a well-deserved goal and restore Celtic’s two-goal cushion.

You’d have thought that would be all she wrote but Hibs were never going to throw in the towel that easy with Neil Lennon as manager and again they broke away with Martin Boyle bearing down on goal before clipping it over the despairing Craig Gordon to make it 3-2.

Frenetic stuff.

The game continued to rage from end to end and Bogdan made several excellent saves before Celtic put it beyond doubt on 88 mins when Tierney passed it forward to Edouard who backheeled it on the spin beautifully to the onrushing McGregor who floated it back over to him in the box and the Frenchman brought it down before finishing superbly past the Hibs keeper to seal the three points.

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Brendan tells French Eddy he’s worth his weight in goals whilst KT does that pose with his hands on his hips pose that he often does. 

What a performance and there is no doubt that an ambitious and high flying Hibs team brought out the best in Celtic. Let’s not forget that Celtic could only record one win from four league meetings against the Edinburgh side last season and even that was only 1-0.

It really does look like we’re back to where we were for the first season and a half under Brendan with a pace and tenacity about the play as well as some absolutely wonderful combination play at pace as Celtic constantly looked to go on the offensive.

When you play like that the opposition will always get some chances but in fairness, both of Hibs goals were top drawer finishes the likes of which we will seldom see from visiting teams in any season domestically at least.

It would appear that we are now back to our best and that all of the nonsensical talk of divisions in the dressing rooms etc is just that. Scott Brown going off injured is definitely a blow as we clearly missed him away against Salzburg and will again on Thursday in Germany if his injury is as bad as initially feared but with the likes on Edouard, McGregor, Forrest and Rogic in red-hot form who knows.

Anyway, a review of Thursday nights opponents will follow tomorrow but at the very least we are definitely back at the races domestically.

Post-match analysis: St.Johnstone 0 – 1 Celtic. Better in the Betfred!

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Not the greatest performance by any means but a win and a deserved one at that.

As predicted the Saints sat in still licking their wounds from a 5-1 pasting at Ibrox on Sunday.

In an action replay of Celtic’s last half dozen or more displays, Celtic lacked tempo and mainly passed the ball aimlessly around at the back for the majority of the first half as the Perth side rarely ventured into our half.

Despite that, both Leigh Griffiths and on the stroke of half-time Callum McGregor passed up stick on chances as Leigh headed straight at the keeper and Callum raced through one on one only to clip it past the far post.

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A whisker away. 

In the second half, Celtic came out like a team clearly given a boot up the backside by Brendan during the half-time team talk and played like a team determined to actually win.

It was all one-way traffic with Zander Clark producing some fine saves in the opposition goal and Leigh Griffiths passing up a few more chances you would usually fancy him to bury.

The men in blue did break away on a few occasions and David Wotherspoon was unlucky to see his curling drive from the edge of the box whistle just past the post but that apart Celtic were dominant.

Just rewards were delivered as Griffiths pounced on a loose ball in the box to bury it and give a deserved lead and eventual winner on 83 minutes. His third goal in as many games and it was good to see him not give up the ghost after a frustrating evening.

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If at first, you don’t succeed……

That was pretty much it bar Boyata getting a senseless straight red card moments later for dissent towards referee Steve Beaton. Replays showed Beaton originally planned to only dish out a yellow but the Belgian internationalist refusal to A) walk over to him when asked and B) keep his mouth shut leading to the claret-coloured one instead.

Scott Bain, in goal for the night with Craig Gordon on the bench, then had a rush of blood in the last few seconds and came for a ball he was miles away from almost resulting in disaster but thankfully it came to nothing.

Aside from that Bain literally had nothing to do all night bar gather up a few speculative crosses and shots from distance.

On the whole, the second half was more like it from Celtic. Showing determination and a real will to win they created chance after chance and it was inevitable one would eventually be taken. It really is amazing what injecting a bit of intensity to the play can do.

Lewis Morgan came on and looked good once again and he is starting to cement a pretty solid case for a starting place.

To the minus points though and the man Morgan came on for, Edouard, again looked ineffective showing very little and there would appear to be slim hope of a partnership with LG up front working as both are way too similar.

Boyata’s straight red rules him out of the semi-final which is cause for concern though it can be appealed. However, I’d hold out little hope of it being successful.

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Boyata walks. No one looks surprised. 

As for the semi-final we got Hearts which is a refreshing change from Rangers who we’ve been drawn against in three out of the last four cup semis.

It brings up the also potentially controversial situation of either ourselves or the side from Govan having to play their semi on the afternoon of Saturday the 27th of October, just 40 hours after a scheduled Thursday night Europa League match.

Rangers are at home in their game against Spartak Moscow whilst we’ll be away to Red Bull Leipzig.

The possible solution is to play both matches on the Sunday with one at Hampden and the other through in Edinburgh at Murrayfield. Outside of that, I don’t really see how it would work. Playing one after the other at Hampden on the Sunday will be kyboshed by the police and having one semi remain on the Saturday will lead to outcry from either half of the Glasgow divide claiming bias.

Watch this space.

Post-match analysis: Celtic 1 – 0 Rosenborg – The Hoops leave it late.

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Just to begin with the vibe of this post would be very different if Celtic hadn’t pulled this out of the fire via a fantastic Leigh Griffiths headed finish in the dying embers.

This was, to be honest, more of the same from what we’ve seen by and large this season from the Hoops.

Despite having scored 27 goals in an unbeaten 10 game run which featured nine wins Rosenborg did what every team seem to do now when they play Celtic – with the notable exception of the elite – by sitting in and letting us play in front of them.

Brendan Rodgers commented afterwards that the Norwegians surprised Celtic by sitting in and playing a diamond formation which they hadn’t attempted before in any previous games they had studied.

That may be so but Celtic are nothing if not predictable at the moment. As was the case in last Friday’s game against St.Mirren – and just about every other game bar a few this calendar year – we continuously pass back with an instinct to constantly recycle the ball showing little to no width outside of Tierney on the left-hand side and trying to ominously play through a packed middle where both Rogic and McGregor appear to contradict each other with their similar playing styles.

In fairness, Rosenborg gave nothing past the halfway line. They were blatantly here for the point and would have had the team coach parked in front of the goals with all of the players on board if it was allowed.

The last time they came to Parkhead they went a goal up and were the better team for 20 mins before we went through the gears and proceeded to rip them apart for the rest of the game-winning 3-1 when it should have been far more. So you argue they had learned their lesson but still, considering how dynamic they are in their domestic league their total lack of ambition here was pretty disappointing. Thye it almost worked. Almost.

Celtic created chances with Rogic gliding through the middle in the first half and setting up Edouard who fired over the bar and not long after the visitor’s goalkeeper made a wonderful double save from both the Australian and the Frenchman.

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In the second half, Mikey Johnston spurned a great chance as he fired over the bar shortly after coming on a sub. Scott Sinclair, who’d also come on a sub, also went inches wide. But it just didn’t seem to be our night until another sub, Griffiths, popped up in the 88th minute to head the ball intelligently down off the turf and past stranded keeper AndrĂ© Hansen after a diagonal high ball to the edge of the box from Brown had been won superbly by the towering Boyata which placed it into the danger area and Leigh nipped in like only he can.

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LG stoops to conquer.

It had been a frustrating night for the home crowd as an air of expectation – understandable considering we battered Rosenborg here only two short months ago on a balmy summers evening – turned to frustration as much fuelled by the lethargic and monotonous passing game as opposed to the lack of finishing.

Indeed many had departed the scene or were in the process of doing so when Leigh scored leading to streams pouring back into celebrate. You’d think with Celtic’s history of late goals folk would have learned their lesson but alas.

Anyway, it was a vital three points if we are to maintain any serious ambitions to qualify. Especially considering our next two games are away against both of the Red Bull clubs because let’s be honest expectations will be pretty minimal for both of those trips, Salzburg in particular.

Tierney was the star of the show. I used to think the comparisons with Danny McGrain were somewhat unrealistic but he really does look an increasingly impressive talent.

Edouard needs to pull his socks up. The guy cost us over ÂŁ9 million – confirmed by the new financial results for any of the doubters – and one goal in six and looking generally ineffective just isn’t good enough.

One major plus is new singing Benkovic. He easily looks a far more composed, dominant and complete defender compared to Jack Hendry, Ĺ imunović and young Ajer. Admittedly there wasn’t much coming at him but there were no bomb scare moments.

Anyway, five clean sheets in a row. That’s good. We just need goals and to stop passing the ball to death endlessly as part of a cunning plan to bore our opposition to sleep.