Why This New Promotion Club be Most Hated in Germany?

Jum'at, 20 Mei 2016 - 00:21 WIB
Why This New Promotion...
Why This New Promotion Club be Most Hated in Germany?
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MUNICH - For the first time since 2009, East Germany has a club in the Bundesliga. It should be cause for celebration. A sign that, after two decades of awful management, East German football is on the up.

But, very few people are celebrating. Why? The answer is simple: RB Leipzig, who earned promotion to the top flight just under two weeks ago, are the most hated club in Germany.

No club in Europe is more divisive than RB. Backed by energy drink producer Red Bull, they have clambered from the fifth division to the first in the space of just seven seasons.

For some, they are the consummate modern success story, a sleek outfit who could one day help to break Bayern Munich's dominance. For others, they are a betrayal of everything German football holds dear. Tradition, identity and, most importantly, the fans' ability to have a say in the way their club is run.

It was the first of many cunning moves to circumvent the endless regulations in German football. Perhaps the greatest coup of all is the way Red Bull got around the issue of fan control. Almost all clubs in Germany have to abide by the 50+1 rule, which gives its members, the fans, the balance of power when it comes to electing the board.

Red Bull's solution was simple. To become a member, you would have to pay €800, more than 10 times the amount you would pay at Bayern Munich. To this day, RB Leipzig have just 17 members with voting powers. So much for fan power.

Though they operate within them, RB make a mockery of the rules which are supposed to protect the rights of fans and the traditions of German football. That is what their critics say.

"My club was founded in order to play football. RB Leipzig was founded to make money. To sell an energy drink," a fan of the city's former major club Lokomotiv Leipzig told Sportsmail.

He is not alone. RB are so hated that many clubs have had to promise their fans that they will not play off-season friendlies against them. In their two years in the second division, RB were greeted with endless protests from opposing supporters, hell-bent on discrediting the club.

Some of those protests have been crude and offensive, such as when Aue fans compared Dietrich Mateschitz to Hitler, and RB's fans to Nazis.

Others have been hilarious. When they hosted RB last August, the producers of Union Berlin's matchday programme took the page which would normally be dedicated to the visiting team, and wrote a 700-word article on the history of bull farming.

Not everyone is so scathing. For some, Red Bull's involvement in German football is simply an inevitability of the modern game. That it should happen in Leipzig, of all places, they would argue, is a good thing.

Leipzig, after all, is the birthplace of the German FA. Yet in the 27 years since the Berlin Wall came down, it has never had a team in the Bundesliga. East German football in general has suffered from the terrible assimilation of its proud old clubs into the post-communist era.

RB is an antidote to all that misery. With their impressive youth system, their rise into the Bundesliga and their growing fan base, they are breathing new life into East German football.

'For Herr Mateschitz, it is all about giving young, talented sportsmen the chance to develop,' RB director of sport Ralf Rangnick told 11Freunde magazine last year. 'People come to the stadium because they want to follow a club and watch good football.'

Those fans certainly do not deserve the scorn that is poured upon them from all corners. They are a passionate bunch, and not prone to violence. They are, largely, just normal people enjoying the fact that elite football has finally returned to their city.

Leipzig's youth system, meanwhile, is indeed impressive. They have players representing Germany at almost every age group. Among the young stars to have represented the club in recent years are Sami Khedira's younger brother Rani and Joshua Kimmich, now of Bayern and Germany.

Yet in their entire first-team squad last season, RB had only two players who came from East Germany, and only one from Leipzig.

They have been accused in the past of an overly aggressive transfer policy when it comes to snapping up the best 15- and 16-year-olds in Germany and Eastern Europe. As Rangnick points out, however, that is only fitting for a club with big ambitions.

'I don't want to be 80 by the time RB win their first Bundesliga title,' said Dietrich Mateschitz last year. That gives the team another seven years to become German champions. No matter how much people hate them, RB Leipzig are here to stay.

RB LEIPZIG
Full name : RasenBallsport Leipzig
Nickname: Die Bullen (The Bulls)
Founded : 19 May 2009
Ground : Red Bull Arena (capacity 42,959)
Sporting director: Ralf Rangnick
Coach : Ralph Hasenhuttl
League : Bundesliga
This season: 2. Bundesliga, 2nd (promoted)
(rnz)
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