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Champions League: RB Leipzig threatens the record breaking early sport

Nordi Mukiele did not move. Next to him, blue and black striped jerseys merged into a cheering crowd, Mukiele looked neither to the left nor to the right. He spread his arms once and let them hang again, then looked as motionless as he was stunned. The 23-year-old from RB Leipzig has already prevented a few hits in his defending career, but on that evening against Club Bruges he was there, Hans Vanaken’s ball swept through his legs, a little later it was 1: 2. The 40th minute was running, but one thing was already clear: happiness is a deceitful affair.

Didn’t you just tear apart Hertha BSC 6-0 in the Bundesliga and jump across the lawn free? Shouldn’t that have been the breakthrough in the most difficult development phase in the young club’s history? Well, a win against Hertha is obviously not a benchmark for Champions League games. “It’s interesting now,” said coach Jesse Marsch after the match against Bruges, “we’re either playing very well or very badly.” And in what he said over the evening, you could already tell that someone was beginning to doubt the path he was taking. And atmospheric tensions have built up.

Marsch misses following his match plan and the right mentality

In the group with Manchester City and Paris Saint-Germain, Bruges should be the easiest opponent for RB, but after the 3: 6 in Manchester two weeks ago they are still with zero points after the striking inferiority against Bruges. “I was surprised that we played so badly,” said Marsch, who is experiencing his first autumn in Leipzig and notices that he is running out of time to form a new team with a new game philosophy on the fly. In the Bundesliga they are only tenth with seven points from six games, and now the Champions League is threatened with a record-breaking early end.

After the early 1: 0 by Christopher Nkunku (5th minute), his team suddenly fell into a rush, said Marsch. Goalkeeper Peter Gulacsi also explained the unrest with the recent success: “I think if you start a game like this 1-0 and win 6-0 at the weekend, it’s a good situation to decide the game early.” The will for quick luck was there, only it led to the exact opposite. “Then after every loss of the ball we pulled ourselves down and lost confidence again,” said Gulacsi. “Every ball won was gone in two seconds,” he said, the frustration almost brought tears to his eyes. “You just can’t win a game like that.”

Self-discovery is a process, not a linear one, that the Leipzigers had to understand that evening: where offensive power and creativity were still at work against Berlin, you took almost all chances against Bruges due to the many mistakes. Self-discovery with Ball is easier than without it, even the experienced Konrad Laimer and Kevin Kampl lacked precision in their interaction. When the break was 1: 2, Marsch told his team to keep calm and play simple, and he told them that too: “Keep the match schedule.” That was the first fundamental criticism of his team: “If we did that, we played well. Not dangerous enough, but at least we had more control of the game.”

Bruges itself has also undergone a radical change

More alarming than a team that doesn’t play according to the coach’s ideas is a team that lacks mentality. “We didn’t save our goal when we conceded two goals, we didn’t give everything to deliver a really good performance at home,” complained Marsch. And soon came to his third conclusion that evening: “We have to think about what our best team is and maybe invest more with a group that understands what we want.” That sounded clearer than it was probably meant, Marsch is not a native speaker, but the message was clear: The 47-year-old will distribute the game shares less evenly in the future than before, he wants to commit to a first team. The last against Hertha consisted of players who had already become runner-up champions under Julian Nagelsmann, only Josko Gvardiol had made it into the first team.

Now it is not that Leipzig is the only club in international football that is in a state of upheaval, the comparison was obvious on that evening: Bruges itself did not change coach in the summer, but it did bring in a number of players, one of which is now four were in the starting line-up, a fifth was substituted on. Philippe Clement’s team made up for what it made of playback errors with their tireless man-marking. “The budget of a top Belgian club is not the same as that of PSG or Leipzig,” said Clement at the press conference after the game, “that’s why we have to compensate for it differently.” Players who come to the club from better leagues are initially shocked by the intensity of the training units, but obviously the joy of running is great. “We knew that Leipzig was slower at the back,” said captain Vanaken. That was another goal in stoppage time.

In fact, Bruges had already taken a point at 1: 1 from Paris Saint-Germain on matchday one; that Leipzig will do the same in the next two games against the French now seems more unlikely than ever. “We made a difficult situation much more difficult,” said Marsch. On Sunday you will meet Bochum in the Bundesliga. Couldn’t such a climber be a very convenient opponent? With the thought you only had to look into the guest curve on Tuesday evening, where the last dance belonged to the Belgians.

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