Bundesliga 1/18: RB Leipzig: The Club Given Wings

 With competitive football generally hard to come by in this part of Europe at this time of year, the first fixture of 2024 would have to involve travelling a little further than usual. Despite having been to Berlin twice in the last decade, I’d always regretted that I never got to watch anything more than Hertha’s 2nd team losing 2-0 at home to Turkish diaspora club Berliner AK. 

As enjoyable as that was back in 2016, we’d missed out on Hertha Berlin v Werder Bremen when they moved the fixture to before our flight. The whole purpose of our trip had been scuppered before it had even begun. With Germany offering the nearest competitive fixtures for me in Brno, a trip to Leipzig seemed a great idea to kick the year off, and so it proved.

Say the name RB Leipzig, and it probably conjures up images of evil conglomerates and energy drinks spoiling the game we know and love, but there’s more than what meets the eye with this club. Whatever your opinion on them, their growth has been something of a revelation as far as German football, and indeed European football at large is concerned.

The RB in their name actually stands for Rasenballsport, translating as lawn ball sports - a common expression I’m sure you’ll agree, and certainly not a duplicitous ploy from Red Bull to subvert the ban on company names in football clubs. Let’s be honest, the first thing you taste is Red Bull on hearing the name RB Leipzig.

Then again, the same can be said of the many other clubs under the RB banner who don’t have to worry about omitting the company from their name - Red Bull Salzburg, Red Bull Bragantino, and Red Bull New York to name but three of them. 

For more on Red Bull and its attempted monopoly in football, I highly recommend Wings of Change  by Karan Tejwani, which gives more of a history than I ever could. 

Getting to Leipzig

Given the lengthy nature of the journey, I opted to break it up into two parts, starting with a Friday night stopover in Prague, followed by an early bus from there to Leipzig on the Saturday morning. We were stopped at the border for around an hour because of one passenger’s passport complications, but I’d thankfully made it by midday.

I met my friend, who’d flown in from Stansted for the weekend, and we headed to the apartment to drop our stuff off. I wish I could use an RB and B joke, but I used Booking.com to get the place, so it doesn’t really work…

We took the 51 tram to the stop nearest the domineering Red Bull Arena, which honestly looks astonishing. It was as magnificent as it looked too, with entry to the stadium perhaps being one of the easiest and most seamless I’ve ever experienced. 

It’s reminiscent of the Emirates or Wembley, but that’s where the comparisons end. Where the latter of those often finds crowds ending up in a bottleneck toward just the one tube station, it barely feels like a match has taken place on leaving the Red Bull Arena.

Naturally I had myself a first currywurst in a good eight years (and it was good), and we took our seats for the match between hosts RB Leipzig and Eintracht Frankfurt, who weren’t a million miles behind their 4th placed opponents in 6th,

RB Leipzig 0-1 Eintracht Frankfurt

The game was as fascinating an introduction to the Bundesliga to me as any, with two of the cup finalists from last year going toe-to-toe. It was to be their first meeting since then, with a near packed house in order for these two current big-hitters. 

That cup final in question finished 2-0 to Leipzig, with Christopher Nkunku and Dominik Szoboszlai netting before their respective moves to England. Frankfurt would get their revenge, but it certainly wasn’t cut and dry despite Ansgarr Knauff’s seventh minute strike. It was the definitive away performance from Frankfurt, as they tried to strangle the life out of the game,

In truth, they were lucky that RBL were so toothless up top, with Benjamin Sesko and Lois Openda missing a hatful of glorious chances. In fairness, Eintracht ‘keeper Kevin Trapp was in the form of his life, despite Xavi Simons’s best efforts to create something for the hosts.

It was the first win in Leipzig for the away side, and a huge blow to RBL’s title chances, with the Bundesliga race now looking particularly two-horse between Bayer and Bayern. 

I was pleasantly surprised by the atmosphere generated by RBL, despite their relative youth as a club, though both sets of supporters were in full voice throughout. In any case, it was a happy journey home for the travelling supporters, who I’m sure I may see again in a future Bundesliga adventure.

As for the city itself, it’s a unique blend of west meets east, which makes sense given its location. There’s the modern German sheen of big business toward the city centre, though you also have the eastern tradition - it didn’t feel hugely different from something like Brno or Trnava in places.

We visited a couple of Irish bars and watched Oscar Bobb give City a last gasp win against Newcastle with a pint of Diesel each (beer and coke - hear me out, it’s actually an incredible combination), before heading back to the apartment after a long day of travel. A final walk around the city and a visit to the cafe Lukas Backer Leipzig saw us on our way after a fairly superb way to start 2024.