Archive for August 18, 2020
A Dream Come True?
Only 11 years after having started in the fifth tier of German football, RasenBall Leipzig has reached the semifinals of the Champions League. And it’s only 15 years since Red Bull first engaged in football, when Dietrich Mateschitz’s energy drink company took over Austrian Bundesliga Club Austria Salzburg. Tonight the dream of reaching a European final could come true. But many still say that RB can’t be called a football club, but is a pure marketing project, created “solely to strengthen the Red Bull brand,” as German football magazine 11 Freunde says: “RB Leipzig is not a football club, RB Leipzig is an imitation.”
However, reaching a Champions League final would be a dream for every club. Also their opponents from Paris, the Qatar-owned PSG, want to finally end their long wait for reaping benefits of their substantial investments they’ve made since 2012. Paris Saint-Germain have already won one European Cup trophy, but that was long before the Qataris started to invest into the Paris based club. In 1996 PSG beat SK Rapid Vienna 1-0 in Bruxelles to win the European Cup Winners Cup.
But tonight, France’s top club could finally reach their first Champions League Final when they and RB Leipzig will determine the first finalist in Lisbon. It is not only the duel between oil and energy drink, but also a match between two German coaches: Julian Nagelsmann (Leipzig) and Thomas Tuchel (PSG). And some Austrian players are going to be involved too, playing for Leipzig.
Although some pundits like German football magazine 11 Freunde refuse to report on RB Leipzig, I am interested in this game and will watch it tonight. And for once I will cheer on a Red Bull team.
“This is a unique experience for us. We’re up for it,” said Leipzig’s midfield-motor Marcel Sabitzer, who also played for SK Rapid prior to joining Red Bull. Like his Austrian team-mate Konrad Laimer, Sabitzer as well as Hungarian keeper Peter Gulacsi, moved from Austria’s series champion Red Bull Salzburg to Leipzig. Most likely all three of them should be in the starting line-up of RB Leipzig tonight.
The Parisians are “one of the best teams in Europe with the ball. We have to be very careful,” warned the 30-year-old Hungarian goalkeeper before the game. His manager Julian Nagelsmann expects top-class speed football from PSG: “It will be very exciting to see how we can get away with this speed and work our opponents in such a way that we can create goals ourselves,” the young German coach (33) says. And the Leipzig coach once again highlighted the opponent’s “incredible individual quality”. “We can hurt Paris more if we have the ball a lot ourselves and create opportunities. They don’t like to defend as much as they like to attack.”
“Above all, the circles of France’s world champion Kylian Mbappe should be limited. Mbappe’s pace is simply unstoppable,” said Nagelsmann.
England’s participants have already been eliminated from the Champions League this year, Manchester City being the last of them. Their shock defeat to French club Lyon, that will entertain Bayern Munich in the second semifinal tomorrow, means that in both semifinals a German and a French outfit are meeting. Therefore we could see an all German as well as an all French Final on Sunday in Lisbon.
After an all-England final last year with Liverpool and Tottenham in Madrid, Lisbon could see an all-German or all-French final on Sunday, 9 p.m. (MEST). Well, I’m keeping fingers crossed for Leipzig tonight – and maybe also in the final on Sunday, though football purists still consider Leipzig not to be a football club, but an imitation! But PSG isn’t a popular club with me either.
EXTRA TIME 
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