‘It has changed a lot’ – RB Leipzig used to be the best dealmakers in Europe, but now they have to change their approach
LEIPZIG, Germany — Red Bull Leipzig did not want to sell Yan Diomande.
Here was a star player unlike any they ever had called their own. They tried as hard as they could to hold onto him. Social media wars raged around them, with speculation about deals and club record fees. Sporting Director Marcel Schafer even got involved, publicly claiming that Red Bull had not agreed a deal with anyone. Leipzig think Diomande can and will become one of the best in the world. That is why they insisted that, if he went, there be a Ballon d’Or bonus in the deal.
Liverpool had reportedly wrapped up his signature. Then it was PSG. Real Madrid, in the end, bid the highest. For €140m, no small consolation, Leipzig had lost their prized asset.
“100 percent, the intent was not to sell Yan Diomande. Why would we do that? But again we are a club that needs transfer revenue… of course it is our intention to keep a player at least two years… if Real Madrid is coming, it’s difficult,” Schafer said.
A few years ago, this would have been standard operating procedure. Leipzig buy talent on the cheap and then shuttles it along to the upper echelons of European football. For a decade-plus, it was a fine modus operandi, and the starting point of some of the most accomplished players around Europe. But things change. Shifts in the transfer market, a growing brand, consistent Champions League football, and a club-wide belief that greater achievements are possible here. Leipzig were smart operators who had a reputation for trading and punching perhaps a little bit above their financial weight. Now, it’s time for a different approach. Now, it’s time to think young.
“Five, six, seven years ago, it was like if they are a rising star in Germany… it was almost clear, in my opinion, that this player, it doesn’t matter what name it is, will move to Leverkusen, Dortmund, or Leipzig. Now it’s like even all the Premier League teams are behind them and try to sign these kinds of players. So for us, it will be tricky in the next couple of years,” Schafer said.
And when you can’t compete financially – or, at least, can’t find the value that you used to – then the modern game forces a quick pivot. Leipzig, for all of their achievements in selling on young players, have never really developed one of their own. Ibrahima Konate, Dayot Upamecano, Dominik Szoboszlai, Diomande: they were all sold to Champions League-competing clubs for vast sums. But they were all scouted from elsewhere. That was no problem when Leipzig had a stranglehold on Paris, Salzburg, Vienna and the lower parts of the Bundesliga.
Now, though, they have no such control. Leipzig are beaten to those players by clubs elsewhere in Europe. So, the focus has to come from within.
“In the past, our business model was more about recruiting quite young, but already senior players from Europe, at 18, 19, 20, work with them for a couple of years or three years, and then obviously sell them again. We were not successful in the past in bringing in very young players, 15, 16, or even younger, working with them in our academy, and then promote them to our first team or sell them,” Head of Youth Development David Wagner told GOAL.
