On paper, RB Leipzig should be one of the great stories of football.
A club that did not exist 11 years ago and only reached the Bundesliga in 2016 has reached the semi-finals of the Champions League.
And it has managed to play exciting, offensive football with a squad that consists exclusively of young people and is led by a manager who is only 33 years old.
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Despite all of this, Leipzig’s existence is offensive to the traditionalists of football and illegal for many in Germany for one simple reason – the club is obviously the game and Red Billboard is for Red Bull.
You are the climber of world football and, as has been said so often, the most hated team in Germany.
Red Bull was rejected by the supporters of several clubs that had been active in the German soccer pecking order for three years. In 2009 he acquired the playing rights of the little-known SSV Markranstadt from the fifth division and immediately changed the name, the colors and the team’s badge.
Within seven seasons, the club had fought their way into the Bundesliga and gave the city of Leipzig a top team for the first time in 22 years.
This rise in the drought was not celebrated by the rest of the country, largely due to the club’s apparent but legal circumvention of the famous German “50 + 1” rule.
The 50 + 1 one rule dictates that individual members own a majority of the club’s voting shares. It’s a rule that is in place to make sure the football belongs to the fans.
RB Leipzig adheres to this policy as technically as possible.
Red Bull, which owns 99 percent of the organization with the club owning the rest, bought 49 percent of the voting shares before selling the remaining 51 percent at exorbitant prices and influencing who could buy them.
The club reportedly only has 17 voting members and all of them have Red Bull ties.
That is not the only inventive gap that RB Leipzig has made optimal use of.
German football clubs cannot be named after companies. That’s another rule that RB Leipzig follows – The RB is short for Lawn ball sports which translated means “grass ball sport”.
German football clubs are also not allowed to have company logos as coats of arms, which has forced RasenBallsport to change its badge twice. There are still two red bulls running towards each other, but they are not the same as those in the energy drink, and instead of a sun between them, they are split by a soccer ball.
Suffice it to say that the club in Germany has disheveled a lot of feathers.
Eintracht Frankfurt refuses to show the RB Leipzig logo on every visit, while the Red Bull Arena is routinely boycotted by opposition fans.
In 2016, Borussia Dortmund fans did just that when protest organizer Jan-Henrik Gruszecki told them about it The guard: “Of course Dortmund makes money, but we do it to play football. But Leipzig plays football to sell a product and a lifestyle. That is the difference. “
This ownership structure has given RasenBallsport a clear advantage over the rest of Germany.
The decision-making process is streamlined by the lack of voting members. Financial fair play aside, there is a bottomless amount of funds to be used and Leipzig has a network of other Red Bull teams to turn to.
Take Dayot Upamecano, for example. Upamecano was the team’s outstanding player in the semi-final win against Atletico Madrid and was with sister club RB Salzburg in Austria until 2017.
Despite all this, it would be negligent to accuse RB Leipzig of simply having success.
Most of the investments it makes are on the training ground, and the players it brings in are young talent that it can sell on for high fees.
Upamecano was originally bought by RB Salzburg for € 2.20m and when he moved to Leipzig in 2017 for € 10m he was hardly a household name. He still hasn’t played for France but the German club will make a huge profit if sold and continue a model that has quickly brought the team a lot of success.
Timo Werner was 20 years old when he moved from Stuttgart for 14 million euros and moved to Chelsea for 53 million euros.
The club appeared to have overpaid when they spent 29.75 million euros to bring Naby Keita out of Salzburg in 2016. He became his best player before moving to Liverpool for € 60m.
Tactically, the team plays exciting football, largely based on quick counter-attacks, and it is clearly designed for that.
That also preceded Julian Nagelsmann, with former managers Ralph Hasenhüttl and Ralf Rangnick both being known for their pressing, hard-running football schools.
On Wednesday, the German team will fight PSG for a place in the Champions League final. For the first time in a long time, it may no longer be cast as the villain.
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