By Andrew Warshaw
November 21 – Their dream is to match Leicester City’s fairytale title success but there is one telling difference between RB Leipzig and last season’s shock Premier league champions: they are arguably the most hated club in Germany.
Newly promoted Leipzig stormed to the top of the table on Friday and stayed there after Bayern Munich slipped up over the weekend against arch-rivals Borussia Dortmund.
In doing so, Leipzig set a record of becoming the first promoted team to go 11 games unbeaten at the start of a Bundesliga campaign. But if you think they are everyone’s second team like Leicester were last season, think again.
Leipzig, who have won four promotions in seven seasons to reach the top flight for the first time, have been the target of hostility throughout Germany by fans who object to the team’s commercial links to energy drink producer Red Bull and their massive investment which threatens to break Bayern Munich’s dominance.
The Austrian company’s billionaire founder Dietrich Mateschitz bought and rebranded the club in 2009 when they were named SSV Markranstädt and were stuck in the fifth division. Three years earlier the former East German city was used for the World Cup even though it had no senior team.
For Leipzig’s fans the big-business investment and expenditure represents the classic footballing success story but for other supporters in a country where having a say in the running of your club is paramount Leipzig stand for everything wrong the game.
Before Leipzig’s most recent fixture against Bayer Leverkusen, a group of masked assailants stopped the team bus in its tracks by falling to the ground and then throwing paint at the windscreen before fleeing the scene.
On the field Leipzig players are routinely the subject of derogatory chants but the club has also won respect with Bayern players and officials admitting are serious title rivals. Borussia Dortmund boss Thomas Tuchel thinks the same.
“Last year we had the phenomenon of Leicester City in England,” said Tuchel. “Leipzig can do exactly the same thing. I’m convinced of that whenever I see them play. Leipzig are no flash in the pan. They have to be taken very seriously indeed. It’s comparable with what happened last season in England.”
Maybe so but Leipzig sporting director Ralf Rangnick is not yet quite ready to accept the impossible. “We are allowed to dream,” he said cautiously after last weekend’s table-topping victory.
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