Footballing Adventures- RB Leipzig v Wolfsburg
A trip to one of the most disliked clubs in Europe
This was the second game of my trip to Germany, as I jumped up from the second tier to a side looking to secure a spot in next season’s Champions League.
Let’s start by addressing the elephant in the corner. Leipzig are perhaps Germany’s most disliked club, and one of the least popular across all of Europe. It’s the method of their success, the source of the money, and the fact they represent everything German fans hate about club ownership.
Let’s also clear this up, RB Leipzig’s name isn’t what you likely think it is. Their full name is RasenBallsport Leipzig. They may play at the Red Bull Arena, train at the Red Bull Academy and have the Red Bull logo emblazoned across all their kits, but the one thing it isn’t is their name. Not that it wouldn’t be had German football regulations not outlawed it.
So I didn’t head to Leipzig out of any love to the club, but more out of intrigue. If they are hated so much across Germany, is there at least some love for them in their own city?
Any opinion for them is obviously helped by the fact that they have been very successful on the pitch. Having been established in 2009, and entering the German football at the fifth tier, they earned four promotions and found themselves in the Bundesliga by 2016. This has been followed by five Champions League campaigns, including reaching the semi-finals in 2020, as well as winning the DFB-Pokal, the German Cup, in each of the last two seasons.
That has at the very least helped build a fanbase, and they regularly get fairly close to selling out the 47,000-seater Red Bull Arena. You wonder whether they’d be as much local support for them had they not enjoyed that level of success, yet at the same time, you wonder whether they’d be the same level of loathing towards them across Germany had they not done so well on the pitch.
Leipzig are an interesting side. They have climbed through the leagues very quickly, and have been a constant in European football. Yet, they are essentially a selling side. They invest in young talent from around the world, build their value by giving them exposure to first team football, then sell them on for a large profit. A lot is helped by their relationship with Red Bull Salzburg, who picked up Erling Haaland as an 18-year-old, and often swap players between the clubs.
Last summer they sold Josko Gvardiol, Dominik Szoboszlai and Christopher Nkunku, all to Premier League clubs, for a combined fee of nearly £200 million. This summer there are likely to be more- Dani Olmo and Benjamin Sesko are both highly coveted, as is Lois Openda, and both Mohamed Simakan and Castello Lukeba will probably move on in the next couple of years.
They find themselves in and around those European places once again this season. They haven’t been able to launch a title charge, with Bayer Leverkusen surprising everyone by running away with it. But Champions League football remains a distinct possibility, especially with the potential that the Bundesliga gets an extra slot come the end of the season.
Their opponents Wolfsburg were struggling down at the other end of the season. They aren’t in a position where relegation is an immediate threat, but unless they pick up a couple of wins over the next few weeks, and results go against them, they could be in for an uncomfortable final couple of weeks of the season.
Wolfsburg are managed by former Southampton manager Ralph Hassenhüttl, who replaced former Bayern Munich manager Niko Kovač at the helm in March. Hassenhüttl’s reputation in England is an interesting one. He had some very good times in charge of Southampton, and picked up excellent results against the Premier League’s top sides, but his highest league finish was just 11th place, and they finished 15th in each of his last two seasons in charge, before being sacked midway through the 2022/23 season and replaced by Nathan Jones, it what proved to be a quite disastrous decision.
He may be best remembered though for managing the Saints’ two 9-0 Premier League defeats, first to Leicester City and then Manchester United. He may have mastered the ‘beleaguered manager pose’ better than any in English football.
This isn’t the strongest squad Wolfsburg have had in recent years, and their league position reflects that. They sold Micky van de Ven and Felix Nmecha at the start of the season for a combined fee of over £60 million, and they replaced them with quantity, perhaps over quality. Lovro Majer was a £25 million arrival from Rennes, but he was one of eight senior arrivals in the summer.
The journey to the Red Bull Arena is one of the stranger routes up to a football ground. You enter the turnstiles at the bottom of the hill, climb up around 150 steps towards the top of the hill, where the ground is almost hidden, dug into the ground. For a nearly 50,000 seater, it is very strange how you can hardly see it from the areas around. Once up the hill, I simply had to walk across a path to the top tier, while those in the bottom tier have to climb back downstairs to enter.
It is for the most part a very typical, quite characterless ground, that you will probably find anywhere else in the world. It is nice, clean, very modern and up to date, the views are good all around the ground and there is a lot of leg room. But, it just isn’t very interesting.
It’s redeeming feature, which isn’t in place on European nights and won’t be there during the Euros this summer, is the standing section behind the goal at one end. This is where the ultras pack in and make all the noise.
That’s what gives it a bit of a personality, a bit of something that you wouldn’t find in another country, and is an improvement to the ground. It also gives you the site of thousands of fans looking to get the best spots at least an hour before the game gets underway.
What struck me immediately, is that although there is a great deal manufactured about RB Leipzig, and it feels very wrong how a big company has turned up and bankrolled them through the divisions up to the Bundesliga, there is nothing manufactured about the support.
There are tens of thousands of fans who turn up every other week, who clearly have a passion for the club, and there is a nice feel around the place. Fans mill around and munch away on bratwurst and currywurst in the fan zone, then there are the thousands who arrive in the terraces to claim the best spot about an hour before the game, and then consistently make noise for the whole 90 minutes.
There is even a little bit of fight against that corporate feel to the club. Behind the goal at the other end, there were numerous empty seats, with fans remaining in the concourse for the opening 15 minutes, with banners at both ends against the increase in ticket prices, particularly in the family section.
You feel these fans probably get a lot of criticism that they don’t deserve. Yes, there is a lot to dislike about Leipzig as a club, and opposition fans have every right to complain about the source of money that has fuelled their success. But for so many of their fans, this is the local club. This is where they can go to watch football at the weekend. For top division football, it is relatively cheap too. I paid around £35 for my ticket, which compared to the rest of Europe’s top five leagues, is a fairly reasonable price in this day and age.
It’s not to say that they all agree with Leipzig’s business model, or the corporate direction of the club, but so many people use football as an outlet from their everyday life, so we should think before we criticise their fans for any role that they may have in this.
Now, around 1500 words into this article, I will actually start to talk about the game that I went to see. Unsurprisingly, it was Leizpig who made the brighter starter. The highly rated Sesko found himself a bit of room just outside the penalty area, but dragged his shot just wide of the post.
Wolfsburg didn’t learn their lesson about letting players shoot from the edge of the box though, with just a few minutes later, Dani Olmo brilliantly turning away from players in a similar position before firing a superb low shot into the bottom corner. He made it look remarkably easy, but it was a real moment of quality.
Leipzig have built what is a very exciting front line. Sesko and Lois Openda both have excellent movement and were constantly finding themselves in dangerous positions, just ahead of the dangerous Olmo and Xavi Simons, two dynamic players who have an excellent ability to pick up dangerous spaces between the lines to receive the ball.
Wolfsburg at least defended fairly well in the first half. They held the shape well, and after the first goal, at least tightened up and denied Leipzig too much space in and around the penalty area. Olmo had one chance from a header from Simons’ delivery, before his corner found Mohamed Simakan, whose header went the wrong side of the post.
While defensively there had been an improvement, there wasn’t a great deal to say about Wolfsburg from an attacking sense. They were looking to play out from the back, but Leipzig were more than ready for this, and there were so many turnovers going their way in the middle third.
If you’ve read my piece on my trip to Hertha Berlin the previous evening, I look forward to seeing if there’s any half time entertainment. In reality I don’t really care, but I always think you need something to fill at least five of those minutes. At Leipzig, just as in Berlin, there was none. Bring back the ‘chipping the ball into a skip’ game. Truly preposterous, but also rather entertaining.
After the break, there was at least a bit of fight from Wolfsburg. Maximilian Arnold had a shot from distance comfortably saved by Peter Gulacsi. That was soon followed by an ambitious, but beautifully struck, volley from Mattias Svanberg, that Gulacsi did very well to keep from dropping into the top corner.
Yet, just as when it looked like they had a chance of getting themselves level, Leipzig caught them on the break. Sesko won back possession in his own half, and set away Simons who carried the ball forward, and returned the ball to Sesko, who calmly finished beyond Wolfsburg ‘keeper Pavao Pervan. Given how the game had gone up until that point, that even with over 20 minutes remaining, it felt like game over.
The Slovenian should have had his second not long after, but couldn’t keep his header down from Benjamin Henrich’s cross. It was a chance he really should have taken. It is easy to see why he is wanted by so many big clubs- he’s quick, strong, very physical, and he has a real eye for goal. He is still very raw though, can be a little untidy in possession and drifts in and out of games.
The Leipzig model means that he will probably move on to one of the big boys this summer for a sizeable fee, but I feel that might be a year too soon. I think another year at Leipzig allowing him to hone his skills a little might be better for him.
It was around this stage that things got a little quieter among the Wolfsburg fans in the tier below me. It can be understandable that they were losing hope somewhat. They have won just one Bundesliga game in 2024, and they never looked like doing too much here. Their fans had been making constant noise since before the match, but by now they’d seen enough, and there hadn’t been much to excite them.
For the Leipzig fans, and the ultras who had been constantly noisy since well before kick off, there was still more to cheer about. Openda, who had been the quietest of the four attackers to that point, superbly took the ball on the back foot to turn away from one of the Wolfsburg defenders, before finishing across the goalkeeper and into the far corner.
The scoreline didn’t flatter Leipzig at all, but there was still time to blot their copybook. Simons collected the ball in his own half, looking to drive forward, only to go to ground seemingly under a Wolfsburg challenge. The referee saw it differently though, and booked him for diving. His manager, Marco Rose, was not impressed, and for his rather vigorous arguments with the fourth official, went into the book as well. Getting a yellow card for diving at 3-0 up isn’t a great look.
The scoreline didn’t flatter Leipzig at all. They were very comfortable from early on, and they do have some incredibly exciting players in attacking positions, that will always give them a chance in games.
Wolfsburg are in desperate need of a result. They aren’t in any immediate danger, but were they to lose a couple more games, and a couple of more results to go against them, and they could be in for a nervy few weeks.
For me, I understand the dislike of Leipzig as a club, and they are in many cases a prime example of the horrendous commercialisation of football in the 21st century. That said, you don’t feel that during the game. The fans are good, the football is good, and the Red Bull Arena is a good place to watch football. As an experience to go and watch football, it is a very good one.