SAMSTAG 15:30

Founded: May 19, 2009
Club Members: 21
Nickname: Die Roten Bullen
Coach: Marco Rose
Captain: Péter Gulácsi

DFB Pokal: 2
German Super Cup Winner: 1
Regionalliga Nordost: 1
NOFV Oberliga Süd: 1
Landespokal Sachsen Winner: 2

Website: www.rbleipzig.com

Even in the hyper-commercial world of 'modern football', RB Leipzig stand out as something of an outlier. Their meteoric rise from the German fifth-tier to Bundesliga runners-up and Champions League semi-finalists in little more than 10 years is seen by some observers as a fairy-tale. To others, the fact that they exist at all in Germany - where a club's history, tradition and identity is valued almost as highly as trophies - has caused a great deal of controversy and made them the 'most hated club' in the country. Yet, despite the contempt the team inspires, there are some who believe that RB Leipzig are breathing new life into a region short on football and economic victories in the post-communist era and contributing to greater competition in a league otherwise dominated by just Borussia Dortmund and Bayern München.

Co-founded by Austrian entrepreneur Dietrich Mateschitz, Red Bull GmbH have long sought to get 'eyeballs on the brand' by sponsoring various sporting events and stunts including skydiver Felix Baumgartner's reality-defying space jump in 2012. However, while Baumgauter's act of derring-do captivated the world, Red Bull's forays into football up to that point had been less arresting. In 2005, they bought Austrian top-flight side SV Austria Salzburg and rebranded them FC Red Bull Salzburg before changing the club crest and kit to the red and white colours of the world's most recognisable energy drinks company. However, despite winning a dozen league titles in the years since then, their impact on the Champions League has been minimal. The profile of Red Bull's other clubs in Ghana, Brazil and New York was similarly limited and with efforts to establish themselves in the sport bearing little fruit, the company began looking for opportunities in Germany - one of football's traditional powerhouses. Few were open to the idea of Red Bull bankrolling a club when it was first touted in 2006 however and an enquiry regarding investment in FC Sachsen Leipzig was rebuffed by the DFB (German FA). Fan protests then followed as the company cast their net further afield and explored potential takeovers at FC St Pauli, 1860 München and Fortuna Düsseldorf, before revisiting their initial idea of acquiring a Leipzig-based team.

 
Leipzig was an obvious choice for a footballing start-up with the sport and the city sharing a long history. The DFB were founded here, VfB Leipzig were crowned Germany's first ever league champions in 1902-03 and their successor 1.FC Lokomotive Leipzig enjoyed glorious European nights, title challenges and cup magic during the 1970s and 1980s. There was also a brand new stadium lying unused after been built for the 2006 World Cup. Leipzig was the 'Stadt der Helden ' (City of Heroes) where protests that brought down the East German state began and the city was entering the initial stages of a renaissance, having stagnated in the aftermath of German reunification. The population was growing, international companies were setting up office and a cultural scene was beginning to flourish leading some to refer to Leipzig as "The new Berlin".  Despite its heritage though, the city lacked a football team with the financial might to take on those from the west. It left an enticing gap for Red Bull to fill. 

When Red Bull came calling, officials at local fifth-tier side SSV Markranstädt didn't know what to expect and hoped that the company would buy the whole club. However, the Austrians quickly made it clear that they were only after their NOFV Oberliga Süd playing licence as setting up a completely new club would have meant starting in the Kreisliga - the lowest division in the German pyramid. Nonetheless, Markranstädt's board remained interested and after some whirlwind negotiations, RB Leipzig were formed in time to start the 2009-10 season having bought the licence, changed the name, crest and kit, and promised a transfer budget of a rumoured €100m. Before a ball had even been kicked, Dietrich Mateschitz made no secret of Red Bull's ambitions telling Bild, Germany's biggest newspaper, that the aim was to play Bundesliga football within eight seasons and that actually winning it was possible ... "in principle".

The impact of Red Bull's patronage was felt within a year. The new club left Markranstädt's Stadion am Bad, moved into the grander surroundings of the Zentralstadion which was promptly rebranded the Red Bull Arena and won promotion to the Regionalliga at the end of their first ever campaign. After their march forward was halted the following year by a fourth-place finish, a major overhaul of the management and playing squad saw Ralf Rangnick, who had masterminded TSG 1899 Hoffenheim's rise from the third-tier to the Bundesliga, appointed Sporting Director. The shake-up did the trick and RB Leipzig finished the 2012-13 season as Regionalliga Nordost champions after a tour-de-force campaign which also saw them beat Chemnitzer FC in the Saxony Cup final. Helped by further investments from Red Bull, the club won two more promotions over the next three years to reach the Bundesliga in 2016 before establishing their presence as one of Germany's top clubs by reaching the Champions League semi-final in 2020 and following up with quickfire DFB-Pokal successes in 2022 and 2023.

In the tribal world of football, the emergence of a new and successful club was always likely to spark hostility. For critics, though, the problem with RB Leipzig goes deeper. Technically speaking, Leipzig haven't broken any of the laws governing German football, but many feel the sleight of hand way that has given Red Bull 'wings' to rise through the leagues challenge their spirit. Their name is a case in point. When Red Bull set up its clubs in Austria, Brazil and the US, it named them after itself: FC Red Bull Salzburg; Red Bull Bragantino; New York Red Bulls. German rules don't allow this. So, instead, the new club were christened 'RasenBallsport Leipzig ', an odd-sounding neologism that means “lawn ball sport” and conveniently abbreviates to RB.

A bigger source of controversy is how RB Leipzig apply Germany’s so-called 50+1 rule -  a shorthand term for a statute in the German Football League (DFL) regulations that simultaneously protects against volatile ownership and safeguards the democratic traditions of German clubs. The rule requires that the parent club — and thus their members — hold a majority of the voting rights in their football club, giving them a say on topics such as ticket prices. Only investors who have funded a club continuously for at least 20 years are allowed to hold more than 50%. RB sidestepped a core principle of the rule by simply limiting the number of club members. At Bayern München, Germany’s most successful club, the annual adult membership fee is €80, and all members over 18 have the right to vote at the club’s annual meeting. At RB Leipzig, the annual fee for a “gold member” is €1,000 — but this does not confer any voting rights and the club refuses to provide details on how to become a voting member. The result is that, whereas Bayern München have more than 290,000 voting members, Leipzig have just 21 -  all of whom are employees of Red Bull. The fewer members involved, the easier it is to get the decisions you want over the line - especially if they're all on the company payroll.

From the outset, RB Leipzig's rise has been met with constant and unrelenting disapproval over its Red Bull-fuelled commercial structure. Shortly after their creation, the club's pitch at Markranstädt was sprayed with weed killer. Teams refused to play friendly matches against them. Erzgebirge Aue supporters distastefully portrayed Leipzig fans as Nazis and compared Mateschitz to Hitler. FC Ingolstadt 04 fans displayed a banner calling coach Ralph Hassenhuttl "a whore of modern football" after learning their manager was leaving them for Leipzig. When RB travelled to the German capital to play Union Berlin in 2014, the team was met with home fans clad in black plastic ponchos who created a funereal atmosphere with a 15-minute silence after kick-off. In the same fixture a year later, Union's programme editors took the page which would normally be dedicated to the visiting team and wrote a 700-word article on the history of bull farming. In 2016, supporters of Dynamo Dresden unfurled a banner that read 'You Can't Buy Tradition!' before upping the ante by hurling a severed bull’s head on to the side of the pitch. 28 Borussia Dortmund fans were arrested in 2017 for throwing cans and stones at the travelling Leipzig support. And fans of TSG 1899 Hoffenheim – previously reviled as the Bundesliga’s other “plastic” club on account of having their own speedy ascent through the German leagues bankrolled by a software billionaire – waved sarcastic placards that read: “We want our throne back: Germany’s most hated club.”

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RB Leipzig’s supporters accuse their critics of hypocrisy - pointing out that 12 other clubs in the Bundesliga have sold their stadium naming rights to sponsors and that their team isn't the first in Germany to be created by a corporation and taking to the field adorned with corporate insignia. This much is true. Bayer Leverkusen and VfB Wolfsburg are both hardly subtle about the respective significant roles that Bayer Pharmaceuticals and Volkswagen play in their identities. However, a fundamental difference exists between those two clubs and RB Leipzig: The former were both started as sports and football clubs for company employees, and detractors will argue that RB Leipzig is a marketing project first and a football team second. Indeed, this corporatism and lack of an authentic background is not appreciated in a national league of clubs replete with histories going back a century.

Leipzig's defenders will point to the club's progressive football philosophy and the fact that although the club have certainly spent large amounts of money to reach their lofty perch in the Bundesliga, by top-flight standards, their outgoings have not been excessive. They have a wage cap and, unlike some English or Spanish clubs, they haven't blown tens of millions on marquee signings. Instead, they've focussed investment on building state-of-the-art training centres, laying out a long-term strategy of developing a specific style of football at all age levels, picking up the most promising youth coaches, establishing an outstanding chain of scouts and recruiting little known talents who have gone on to become stars at the club like Emil Forsberg, Naby Keita, Timo Werner, Marcel Sabitzer, Dayot Upamecano and Joshua Kimmich. 

The lack of history and tradition spanning a century also means that RB Leipzig are free of some of the negatives that such a heritage might bring like an over-enthusiastic fanbase attacking opposing fans or throwing dismembered cattle onto the pitch during a game. Home games certainly lack the same atmosphere found in other German stadia, with their ostentatious pyrotechnic displays and enormous, unfurled banners. However, the plus side is that they also lack the often accompanying drunken rowdiness and violence that mar other games. This makes games at the Red Bull Arena a more wholesome affair and one that can be enjoyed by the family without fear of getting caught up in trouble.

There is also an argument that Red Bull’s financing doesn't just benefit fans of the Roten Bullen, but all fans of the Bundesliga. While German fans are fearful at the thought of wealthy corporate benefactors running riot over the Bundesliga in the same way that they have in the English Premier League, it has at least brought a degree of competitiveness to the highest end of English football. It can be argued that this investment prevented just one or two teams from dominating the league year in, year out, with their future dominance assured by the financial windfall they reap by their successive victories. Over the past decade, there have been five different Premier League champions. By comparison, there have just been two in the Bundesliga, with one of them - Bayern München - having their name engraved in the sterling silver of the Meisterschale for the past 11 seasons. If a team is able to make things more exciting by making the Bundesliga more competitive, is that such a bad thing? 

​For young fans in the Leipzig area, watching big clubs like Dortmund and Bayern complain nervously about the Saxon upstart is a novel and exciting experience given the fact that RB Leipzig hadn't even been formed the last time a team from the former GDR played in the Bundesliga. Even so, regardless of the positives on offer; the very nature of the team, its corporate identity and lack of history will ensure that it is a long time before the RB Leipzig 'fairy-tale' is accepted by German football fans.