RB Leipzig: Looks like Red Bull really gave them wings
Red Bull has become a synonym of success whenever they are mentioned in a sport. Whether it be extreme sports, Formula 1, and now football, they have accomplished great things, and most of them in a short period of time. As regards football, they have become a sort of conglomerate with teams in the USA, Austria, Germany, and Brazil. In this article, we take a closer look at the most ambitious of them, RB Leipzig, a club that started in the fifth division and reached the Bundesliga (first division) in just 8 years. Leipzig showcase a perfect display of what it means to be efficient and how important it is to have a clear vision and model to follow.
History
Not long ago, in 2009, Red Bull would acquire fifth division club SSV Markranstädt and re-name it, RB Leipzig. After the success the company had with the teams in Salzburg and New York, Red Bull thought it right that the next step for their football conglomerate was a club in the Bundesliga. However, due to German regulations, they could not just come in and acquire a first division team, instead, they had to start from the bottom and work their way up. This was not the only rule the company had to deal with. The DFB (German Football Association) states that German clubs must operate under the “50+1”, in which fans are supposed to have the majority of shares and control over the club. Obviously, this is not the case with Leipzig. Red Bull found a legal way around this rule, in which they own 49% of the shares and they sell the rest at a ridiculously high price, while also deciding to who they sell them to; them being people linked with the company. There is also a rule against clubs using commercial brands in their logos, which they complied with by doing some minor changes to the design of the famous bulls.
Perhaps the cleverest answer to these regulations came when the Red Bull masterminds came up with a way to comply with the rule that says that clubs are not allowed to name themselves after corporations. The RB in the name stands for RasenBallsport (Lawn Ball Sports) and not Red Bull like many people think, making it truly a brilliant move in terms of marketing.
Ralf Rangnick
There is one person that made the success of this project possible, and that person is Ralf Rangnick. Described as the architect of the project, Ralf has restructured the club and turned it into an efficiency machine. Before his appointment in 2012, Leipzig was struggling to get out of the 4th division, having spent two years in it without achieving promotion. After his appointment, Leipzig would secure two promotions in a row and reach the Bundesliga (1st division) in 2016.
Rangnick is known as the father of gegenpressing, a playing style philosophy where there is an emphasis on pressing and counter-pressing the opposing team. It is based on the belief that the best chance of recovering the ball is within 8 seconds of losing it and that most goals can be scored 10 seconds after regaining possession. Therefore, his teams press very high and when the ball is recovered, they focus on making forward passes to attack as quickly as possible. This philosophy of play has not always favored him, and early on in his career, many people criticized him for it and even mocked him. It was during his time at Hoffenheim (2006–11) when his playing style started attracting interest across Germany and today many of the most successful German coaches follow his ideas, such as Klopp, Tuchel, and Nagelsmann.
Rangnick’s Organization Management Model
Rangnick seemed like the perfect person for the Red Bull project, having taken Hannover (2001–04) and Hoffenheim (2006–11) to the Bundesliga from second and third division respectively. He also achieved great success in Schalke (2011), where he won the DFB-Pokal and reached the semifinals of the Champions League. His organizational management style is based on three pillars or how he calls them the “three Cs in Football”: which are Concept, Competence, and Capital. The “Concept” refers to having a clear understanding of what the club’s vision and strategy is. This is a plan you commit to the long-term and something you lean back on even during the most troubling times. In order to execute your “Concept” in the best possible way, you need to have “Competence”; which means hiring the right people with the right set of skills to implement your plan. Lastly, “Capital” refers to the resources that the club has available to invest in the project. Although “Capital” is important, he states that it is not as determinizing as the other two factors are. The three Cs concept can be identified in his work both in Leipzig and Salzburg, where from the very beginning a club identity was established and all the choices taken were align with the club’s vision. Even though the club is backed by Red Bull and its extensive resources, Leipzig has been able to create sustainable growth thanks to its vision of youth in which they develop players, increasing their market value and then selling them for big profits. This is possible thanks to their extensive scouting network that the organization has developed along with its sister clubs.
Scouting Young Talent
The way RB Leipzig recruit and assemble their squads is very different from many other teams of similar size. Backed by Red Bull, one would expect them to pay big sums for established or “star” players, but Leipzig’s model is far from that. They also don’t have an academy that produces first-team level players. Instead, they scout young players with great potential in other teams or academies. Leipzig targets players that are 23 or younger that possess the ability to become future stars and that can play or adapt to RB Leipzig’s style of play. Thanks to the Red Bull conglomerate they have a far wider reach in terms of scouting than other clubs, especially with teams in Germany, Austria, Brazil, and the USA they can attract some of the best talent available in the area. Additionally, Rangnick has done a great job instructing his scouts on what type of players he is exactly looking for. This enables him to trust the work of his scouts and thus operate more efficiently.
One of the main points of their recruiting model is to develop these players into “stars” and sell them for big profits. Some recent examples are:
Some of these players have been sold for 100% profit or more and have been replaced with equally good or better players for a much lower value. Results have not declined with the exit of any of these, proving that Rangnick’s model can be successful and sustainable.
Conclusion
RB Leipzig has been able to achieve such rapid success because they have built and committed to very solid foundations established by Ralf Rangnick. His model offers a way of fast results while at the same time not overspending. It is true that thanks to Red Bull’s resources, they can scout players from almost anywhere on the planet and that this is something rival clubs might not be able to do, but still, they have never paid more than $40m for a player and they have often sold some of their best players along the years, while still maintaining a high level of performance. Achieving 4 promotions and budling a team that can reach the semifinals of the champions league in almost 10 years is hard to believe, but something that Rangnick and his team have shown us it can be done. I believe that in the near future there will be more clubs following this model, especially considering the astronomical amounts that “star” players cost these days and that only a select few clubs can afford to pay them.
