Football – RB Leipzig goes into the top game relaxed

Marco Rose was able to relax and turn to the joys of the pre-Christmas season in a conversation before RB Leipzig’s top game at FC Bayern. Before the duel this Friday evening, the RB coach chatted at the end of the football year about touching encounters while visiting the Christmas market, the gift situation at Rose’s house and good food before Lent. The relaxation after the difficult weeks was palpable on Cottaweg. At the beginning of Advent, things were still bad for Rose’s future in his hometown.

In the pitch-black November, the Leipzig team did not win a single game, instead they lost all games apart from the meager 0-0 draw against Mönchengladbach and were crashingly eliminated from the Champions League early with zero points from six games. The people of Leipzig, whose previous club narrative has been one story of promotion, are not used to this – there has never been such a low point at RB. In the 1:5 home debacle against VfL Wolfsburg, the team completely collapsed. Judging by the short fuse so far of decision-maker Oliver Mintzlaff, who has become Red Bull boss, one had to assume that Rose would be out of his job.

Rose successfully fights for his position

But given the circumstances with up to nine injured players, his standing in the club and in the city and the support from the team, the only East German coach in the Bundesliga continued to receive credit. Supervisory board chairman Mintzlaff and sports director Marcel Schäfer also wanted to keep Rose in office so as not to create any facts before Jürgen Klopp starts as the new overall football manager at Red Bull on January 6th. As is well known, both of them have shared years in Mainz, when coach Klopp was successful in the Bundesliga with leading player Rose.

And Rose justified the trust by fighting for his job, taking the right measures and, for the time being, turning things around, especially with two wins against Eintracht Frankfurt in the DFB Cup and in the league. He achieved this by calmly moderating the crisis and finding creative solutions because there were no longer any experts available for the respective positions. The fact that he retrained playmaker Antonio Nusa to be a wing-back because David Raum was missing for weeks and let sixth man Nicolas Seiwald play right center-back worked.

Back to the Leipzig DNA

Rose prescribed RB more compactness again by relying on a deep 5-3-2 block against the ball and made the RB game idea less dominant and more puristic. In this way he helped his insecure and outplayed professionals find their way back to the Leipzig DNA. Against Frankfurt, the raid-like, yet precise switching that actually characterizes RB in good games under Rose could be seen in both games.

The decisive factor for this is a player who, after seven and a half months out of action following a torn cruciate ligament, ensures ball conquests, forward momentum and stability at the same time: Xaver Schlager. Rose recently compared the importance of the pace setter from Austria for RB with that of Ballon d’Or winner Rodri for Manchester City. And it actually became clearer from match to match during the crisis how much Schlager was lacking in game control.

Rose has now averted short-term disaster for the time being. But he knows full well that he will be on probation in the second half of the season. Ultimately, RB does not want to be satisfied with the status quo as a Champions League participant and training club for Europe’s top talents, but rather aims for the championship and Europe’s top eight with Klopp in the medium term.

The ambitions remain high

»The longing, the desire, the ambitions are always there. It’s only normal that the fans start to dream and you yourself also taste blood and want more,” said Rose. He wants to be measured against these goals when all players are healthy again. “Then a coach can be billed more clearly, then you have to win top games as well as the smaller games, and then you can see what euphoria, stadium and flow can be enough for,” explained the 48-year-old, but emphasized: “But We’re a long way from that right now.”

But without a triple burden, with reinforcements during the winter break, a fit squad and Klopp’s expertise, the Red Bull club should come up trumps in the second half of the season. If that happens, it is not impossible that Rose will still be in office next Christmas.