NIKO KOVAC hasn’t done himself too many favours with some of the things he has said this year. Praising Saturday’s opponents RB Leipzig (“we should maybe see them as a role model for us”) ahead of the penultimate Bundesliga game of the season wouldn’t have won the Croatian manager many new fans in Bavaria and beyond, either.
As unassailable top dogs, Bayern Munich usually don’t pay too much attention to what other clubs do in Germany and the suggestion that Leipzig, of all sides, should be emulated is almost incendiary. The Saxons, set up as marketing vehicle by the Red Bull group, are still the most despised side in Germany for lacking any authenticity and history.
To be fair to Kovac, too, he had a point. His praise for Ralf Rangnick’s team came with a specific reference to their youth set up, which many consider as the best in the business in Germany. RB aggressively pursue gifted youngsters and have shown themselves to pump huge sums into the development of budding professionals.
Timo Werner has scored 5️⃣0️⃣ Bundesliga goals for RB Leipzig
That's over 2️⃣5️⃣% of RB Leipzig's Bundesliga goals ever! pic.twitter.com/64vKXxtORx
— Goal (@goal) May 3, 2019
Moral questions about their disruptive effect on the Bundesliga’s largely organic ecosystem aside, Leipzig have shown themselves very shrewd operators. In addition to their aforementioned youth system, a vertically integrated chain of (thinly disguised) feeder clubs helps them cultivate a huge number of promising players as well as coaches who are gradually moved upwards to Leipzig, who sit at the top of the pyramid.. The transfer of USMNT midfielder Tyler Adams from NY Red Bulls to RBL in January is the perfect case in point.
Traditionalists abhor the hard-nosed set-up and the lack of democratic oversight – in circumvention of existing regulations – but there’s no doubt that the Red Bull money is being very well spent. In their third season in Germany’s top flight, they have qualified for the Champions League for the second time and are one game away from winning their first major trophy when they take on Bayern in the final of the DFB Cup on May 18.
All of this has come against the backdrop of Rangnick, RBL’s Head of Football, appointing himself as care-taker manager at the beginning of the season, meant to keep the bench warm for the incoming prodigy Julian Nagelsmann.
The 60-year-old was never going to be a lame duck due to his strong power base at the club but guiding RB to third place and the DFB cup final was nevertheless no mean task. In the previous campaign, Ralph Hasenhüttl had failed to instil a more expansive passing game; Naby Keita left for Liverpool and shadow striker Emil Forsberg still isn’t quite the player he was before picking up a series of injuries that have derailed his career to an extent.
Leipzig have nevertheless been quite brilliant, especially in the second half of the season, when they returned to their roots. Their pressing is bit more refined now, but their transition game is once again in a league of its own.
This Saturday, they have a chance to rekindle Borussia Dortmund’s flame with a win over Bayern – their lead would be cut to one point if Lucien Favre’s men beat Fortuna Düsseldorf – and ensure that their cup final opponents would spend the next week worrying about the potential failure to defend their title and heap more doubt on Kovac’s future at the club.
For Rangnick, who’s often clashed with the Bayern hierarchy in the past, getting one (or two) over on them would be extremely sweet. But even if the likes of Thomas Müller et al were to secure the championship with a win at the Red Bull Arena on Saturday, RB are likely to become one of Bayern’s biggest challengers due to their financial power and their clearly-defined playing style.
The Munich-based club, by comparison, have many unresolved issues that stretch from their problems with getting youth team players into the first squad to the glaring disconnect between Kovac’s defensive outlook and the team’s cravings for fresh attacking ideas. It’ll be foolish to proclaim RB as the third-biggest power in the Bundesliga just yet but their trajectory is clear enough to predict that this decade’s top two won’t have it all their way.
Under Nagelsmann, Leipzig will only improve further, perhaps to the point of becoming real contenders if transfer outlays rise. Very soon, their successful youth academy could be the least of Bayern’s and Dortmund’s problems.
