By Ben McFadyean.
The move to the much-derided Red Bull Football Group is official and so may well be the departure of Jürgen Klopp’s former hero status in the game.
The news yesterday of the former BVB coach’s appointment to the Red Bull multi-club construct as global head of soccer, with an exit clause that leaves the door open to take over the Germany national team which many regard as a perfect combination, drew widespread criticism from across the fan scene.
Klopp took the hearts of three clubs by storm: FSV Mainz 05, Borussia Dortmund and Liverpool FC. He didn’t leave any scorched earth in his wake; rather, the fan communities of the aforementioned clubs mourned his departure for years to come.
With his down-earth manner and relatable style, the German coach achieved almost unparalleled levels of popularity. Not only as a coach but also as a person, he left behind gigantic footprints that will hardly ever be filled in his wake. Few coaches linked the BVB’s south stand with the players on the pitch and united BVB like ‘Kloppo’. And at Anfield and Mainz’s Mewa Arena, many would argue likewise.
Red Bull and football… What is the issue?
Football is a business and everyone in the game, even journalists, has a responsibility to maximize their earnings and fulfill their ambitions. However, we are all faced with decisions that require discernment and that require weighing up ethical questions and how our actions might impact the wider community.
In the Bundesliga, few clubs have caused as much controversy as the promotion to the first tier of the Red Bull corporation-backed RB Leipzig in season 2016/17.
The club was founded only in 2009 after taking over a cash-strapped team that was unable to meet the licensing obligations for the fifth tier, the Oberliga-Nordost.
Based 13km from Leipzig, SSV Markranstädt was rebranded in the livery of the Austria-based energy drink manufacturer, although forced into a commitment on the club’s name from Red Bull to Rasenball, lawn football, due to the limits on the use of corporate names in the names of football teams by the national federation, the DFB, and their ascent to the first tier and the DFB Pokal win in 2021/22.
Through a combination of the leadership and vision of greats of the German game including former Hamburger SV sporting director and defender Dietmar Beiersdorfer, and one of German football’s greatest tactical minds current Austria manager Ralf Rangnick, and a not minor investment of over €200m in the squad by the co-founder of the Red Bull corporation Dieter Mateschitz, the club rose to the top tier ahead of the club’s 8-year plan.
The process that started with the rebranding of the New York Metro Stars in 2006 was expanded to further territories including most controversially to the 17-time champions of the Austrian League Austria, now Red Bull, Salzburg, which led to an extended legal battle with the club’s own fans, and the founding of their own club with the original name only months later.
The advance of the Beverage firm into football continued with the acquisition of a Sao Paolo-based club founded in 1928 that had spent most of its history in the third and fourth tiers of Brazilian football CA Bragantino, since 2019 Red Bull Bragantino.
Despite a failed project in West Africa, Red Bull Ghana, which the company abandoned after just six years in 2014, the expansion has continued with the buying of stakes in Vietnamese first-tier club Hoang Anh Gia Lai Football Club and a minority 10% stake in three-time English champions Leeds United, both in 2024.
Leveraging the success that has led to the Austrian company’s rise to the third most successful soft drinks company worldwide in 2023, with more than 100bn cans sold worldwide, the company has expanded into sponsoring a range of activities and sports, including hitherto less visible sports like extreme sports including aerobatics and parkour.
Corporate success clashes with football culture and 50+1
Whilst few fail to be motivated and inspired by a major success story, and sponsorship and corporate ownership in football are an expected part of what has long been defined the football ‘industry’, the energy drink maker’s advance into football broke many of the widely-held taboos in the home of the 50+1 rule which limits outside investment in football clubs to 49.1% Germany.
With the exception of VfL Wolfsburg who were founded and backed by the Volkswagen company; Bayer Leverkusen, a division of chemicals giant Bayer AG; and formerly TSG Hoffenheim who were brought out of fifth-tier obscurity to become a top ten first-tier club through the investments of local impresario Dietmar Hopp’s software company SAP, clubs in Germany are member-owned, with some such as SC Freiburg remaining 100% owned by the membership body.
Many club grounds, such as that of first-tier Augsburg, the Augsburg Arena, second-tier 1 FC Nürnberg, the Max Morlock Stadion, and Borussia Dortmund II, Stadion Rote Erde are also owned by the local municipalities and therefore provide revenue to the local cities and service to the wider community.
The principle of a partnership between fans, local municipalities, and football clubs which the ownership model enshrines gives fans a sense of a deeper stake, and hence participation in the game — in Germany in particular which has found itself under fire due to the incursion of corporate investors into the game like Red Bull.
As a result, the advance of RB Leipzig has been resisted by the wider fan community with the club subject to a constant barrage of protests and banners from clubs across the league, including the throwing of a severed bull’s head by Dynamo Dresden fans in season 2015/16.
The on-field success that has led to the East Germany-based club winning the DFB Pokal twice, and consecutively, in 2021, and 2022, and establishing itself as a regular participant in European competition has yet to persuade the critics in the Bundesliga fan community who fear an erosion of their football culture from further corporate incursion.
Jürgen Klopp’s values and rapport with the fan community won him many friends… joining Red Bull will not, at least in Dortmund.
If you want an idea of how this is going down in Dortmund… a flavour of the comments from BVB fans to me this morning:
— Archie Rhind-Tutt (@archiert1) October 9, 2024
Football is dead.
He’s absolutely dead to me.
That makes me sick. https://t.co/X9Ib0RPnVS
The Stuttgart-born coach has won almost every title in his 23-year coaching career earning himself almost mythical status in the European game.
Without a club since leaving Liverpool FC in the summer of 2024, the sight of the coach that led Borussia Dortmund to a title and the double between 2010-12 on the touchline for the testimonial match of Lukasz Piszczek and Jakub Błaszczykowski in early September inspired many among the BVB fan community to believe in a potential reunion.
The close friendship between Dortmund’s CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke and the former Liverpool coach that included Klopp writing a chapter in Watzke’s 2019 biography ‘Echte Liebe’ and regular appearances to the Westfalenstadion is well-known.
The transition in the sporting director role from club legend Michael Zorc to former captain Sebastian Kehl since 2022 has been widely criticized in particular for what have been regarded as failed transfers, in particular the signing of Felix Nmecha who was ear-marked to replace Jude Bellingham but has only made 26 appearances since his record €30m transfer in 2022 providing a potential opening for a leadership position for the former Mainz 05 coach at the Westfalian club.
Whilst the hopes of a return to a sporting director position were dashed with the promotion of former striker Lars Ricken from the youth academy in April, Jürgen Klopp was still widely regarded as a fit with very wide backing among the fan community to lead the club which has failed to win the Bundesliga and is on its seventh managerial appointment in Nuri Sahin since the ‘normal one’ departed for Anfield in 2015/16.
The choreography on the Südtribüne, the 25,000 standing terrace at the Westfalenstadion at the end of the final game of the season against 1 FC Köln in May 2016 read: “Danke Jürgen, we will need many years to understand how precious these moments can be” alongside an image of the former coach, which was raised to thunderous applause on all sides, including the Cologne among the fans, across the ground that day.
The two championships, a DFB Cup win and the Champions League final in 2013 at BVB, promotion to the Bundesliga with Mainz 05 in 2005, and an astonishing legacy including the Champions League title and the first title in 19 years, both in 2019 at Anfield is a legacy which is historical as a testament to Jürgen Klopp’s leadership as a coach and that cannot be taken away from him.
However, what has been imperilled by the decision to join the Red Bull-backed group of football clubs, all of which apart from Austria, now Red Bull Salzburg, are comparatively modern constructs is the abandonment of a commitment to a certain idea of a down-to-earth fan-centric football, a football of historical clubs like Borussia Dortmund and FC Liverpool which vast amounts of fans, especially in the German game could relate to.
The appointment to the Red Bull corporation will largely be regarded as the abandonment of those exact principles — often framed in the fan community using the slogan “against modern football.” Instead, one of the most successful and charismatic coaches in the game has decided to put himself in the service of exactly the modernizing forces which fans protest against, and are changing the game beyond recognition.
Many among the Dortmund fan base will regrettably now be hoping at this time that the testimonial appearance for the two Polish legends in September will be the last at the Westfalenstadion.