Whe swarm of bees, as the Spanish newspaper “Marca” put it, had RB Leipzig come through Atlético Madrid – a beautiful picture of how Julian Nagelsmann’s players hummed and hummed over the pitch in the 2-1 victory in the quarter-finals and the Madrilenians, actually pachyderms of the business, left no rest and ultimately robbed them of their nerves. It was different against Paris on Tuesday evening. There was little to be seen of the Leipzig swarm intelligence in the semifinals, this time it looked more like bustling insects got lost under a tight suit. Neymar, Mbappé, Di María and the others – they plagued and pained the people of Leipzig, and all attempts to get rid of the troublemakers ended, as you know from the summer garden or the camping holiday: with a loss of inner calm and coordination. Nagelsmann’s team, which lined up mistake to mistake and foul to foul, was in the end an easy victim of the Parisian force of nature.
One of the topics of conversation after this bitter 0: 3 was the question of whether Nagelsmann could have wanted too much, whether he – like Pep Guardiola – wanted to give this special game a very special cut and perhaps overdid it. But that could only be said about his wardrobe. As far as football was concerned, what happened was what his Parisian counterpart Thomas Tuchel had previously formulated as a hope: that it would not be a “coaches’ game”, a duel of the tactical brains, but a “Players’ Game”. And it quickly became clear that RB was hopelessly inferior. Just as some opponents collapsed this season under the pressure of the Leipzig collective, the Saxons did it in the face of a breathtaking individual class, which – that was part of the problem – did not like itself in self-reflection.
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