By Alex Roberts
After missing out on the Austrian Bundesliga title last season, the first time in ten years, Salzburg hired a man Klopp is very familiar with, Pepijn Lijnders, his former Liverpool assistant manager.
Leipzig, on the other hand, already had one of the hottest young managers at the helm. Marco Rose is regarded as one of the best minds in German football, he had guided Leipzig to the Champions League for three consecutive seasons before 2024/25.
Neither would make it to the end of the campaign. Lijnders was the first to go, sacked after six months in charge with a record of 13 wins, seven draws, and nine defeats under his belt. His Liverpool connections couldn’t save him, no matter how much he tried.
Young, dynamic central midfielder Bobby Clark joined from his former club in a deal reported to be around £10 million, while Stefan Bajčetić was given a chance to impress on loan with the Austrians.
After a transfer window that was pretty typical of the RB Salzburg we’ve come to know, buying young players with a high ceiling to sell on for a profit, expectations were high as they sought to forget the previous season.
Lijnders’ tactical naivety was evident almost immediately. He had grown too used to the players he had at Liverpool, without the likes of Alisson, Virgil van Dijk, and Mohamed Salah, his Salzburg players couldn’t play the way he wanted.
The link between defence, midfield, and attack were almost non-existent and as a result their defensive set-up left them wide open on the transition, allowing the opposition to outnumber them and score. Put simply, they looked like 11 random players that had never seen each other never mind met.
Back in East Germany, Rose started the domestic season well, winning six, and drawing two games before suffering their first Bundesliga defeat of the season to Borussia Dortmund at the start of November.
On the continent, it was an entirely different story. Champions League defeats to Atlético Madrid, Juventus, and Liverpool in their first three games left them with little no hope of qualifying from the new look league phase.
The aforementioned defeat to Dortmund is when everything started to unravel for Rose and his lads. Four losses and one draw in their next five across all competitions saw heads drop and faith in the boss diminish.
By the time 2025 rolled around, Klopp was named Red Bull’s Head of Global Soccer. It didn’t go down particularly well with a lot of German football fans; in their eyes one of their great figureheads had sold out and become a corporate shill. At least he didn’t have to sack his old mate Lijnders, that was done and dusted before he arrived.
Thomas Letsch was the man tasked with picking up the pieces as Salzburg, and talk about a baptism of fire, they travelled to Real Madrid in the Champions League, losing 5-1. Red Bull could have done him a favour and let him miss that one.
Atlético came to Salzburg for his second game and their final European game. The Austrians had nothing to play for other than pride but that was enough of a motivator. At least for Letsch it was a 4-1 loss rather than 5-1.
While Letsch’s time under the Red Bull yolk was just beginning, the writing on the wall was starting to appear for Rose. Xavi Simons, one of the most exciting young prospects in European football made his loan move permanent in January but results didn’t change.
Finally, on March 30th, following a 1-0 defeat to Borussia Monchengladbach, Rose was given his marching orders by Klopp and co. His two-and-a-half-year stint at the club was over and Zsolt Löw took over on an interim basis.
Since then, the season has been a write off. Leipzig will be without any form of European football next season having finished in seventh, just one point off Mainz who qualified for the Conference League.
Barring a collapse of an enormous magnitude, Sturm Graz will be crowned Austrian champions for the second consecutive season as they sit at the summit of the Championship group with 39 points. Austria Wien and Wolfsberger could, technically, still catch them but both sit three points back, and require a combination of results before we start to look at various head to head results in the event of teams finishing level on points.
Salzburg still have something to play for, however. Currently in fourth with 35 points, they can still finish as high as second and qualify for next season’s Champions League. Failure to beat arch rivals Rapid Wien on Saturday in another edition of arguably Austria’s biggest game would see them fall to their worst league finish since the takeover.
Red Bull will undoubtedly throw a lot more money at their footballing project this summer. Salzburg don’t currently have an Erling Haaland or Sadio Mané, the type of young star they could pin their hope on.
Leipzig do, but top goal scorer Benjamin Šeško looks destined for the Premier League with Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool circling, while Simons is reportedly pushing for a move just six months after joining.
For the first time since either of these clubs became what they are, the trajectory isn’t upwards. They flew too close to the sun and the wax holding Red Bull’s wings together has started to melt.
(Cover image from IMAGO)
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