Only 1-1 against Leverkusen. And now only a 0-0 in Wolfsburg. RB Leipzig lost four points in the race for the German championship in just one week. Before the second leg against Tottenham, this puts a Champions League spot in the league itself at risk.
Wolfsburg (dpa) - The German championship? At first Julian Nagelsmann doesn't talk about that anymore. "We don't have to talk about Bayern," said the RB Leipzig coach after the 0-0 win at VfL Wolfsburg in a Sky interview.
Due to the two draws against Wolfsburg and Bayer Leverkusen, his team lost four points in just one week in this title race of the Bundesliga. Leipzig is no longer the first Bayern pursuer, but Borussia Dortmund.
The Saxons are now focusing on the Champions League - in a double sense. Already on Tuesday evening (9:00 p.m. / Sky) the round of 16 second leg against Tottenham Hotspur and his prominent coach José Mourinho is on the cards. The chances of knocking the last year's finalists out of the competition are very good after their 1-0 first leg win in London.
And then there is the big goal of being represented in the Champions League again in the coming season. And that is exactly what is a little in danger due to the loss of points from the last two Bundesliga games. Because in the meantime, the Leipzig team have to pay more attention to Leverkusen and Borussia Mönchengladbach in the table than to run after Bayern.
"It is extremely difficult to get into the top four this season. We have very strong competitors with Bayern, Dortmund, Leverkusen and Gladbach," said goalkeeper Peter Gulasci. "The first thing is to win our games again."
On 22 of 25 match days, RB has been on one of the four Champions League spots. In the past two games, however, the team lacked exactly the qualities that brought them there. "We want everyone," said Gulasci. "It's not about someone sitting in the cabin and not wanting to do it. But we lacked the power and the ultimate consequence today."
Trainer Nagelsmann liked to take such setbacks as an opportunity to become fundamentally. "When you are close to the summit, the question is always where you want to go. Either I want to go up to the summit cross and achieve something or I turn off beforehand and eat and drink something comfortably," he said after a 0: 2 in Frankfurt.
Only three days before an important Champions League game, however, he left this barrel closed as a precaution and instead only addressed purely sporting things. "We still miss footballing moments against deep-seated and well-defending teams," said the 32-year-old. How to play out such unpleasant opponents: "Bayern shows us every week."
Before the Tottenham game, Nagelsmann hopes that his best striker Timo Werner can be there right from the start, instead of sitting on the bench for an hour as in Wolfsburg because of thigh problems. In addition, the Leipzig form problems are currently nothing compared to what the next opponent is going through.
Since the first leg loss to RB, Tottenham has lost, among other things, a London derby against Chelsea and a cup match against bottom of the table Norwich City. In the English league, the club is no longer even on a Europa League pitch.
"Someone has to understand that this is the Premier League," said Mourinho last weekend after a 1-1 draw at Burnley FC, referring to Tottenham's French record-breaking Tanguy Ndombele. "A player with his potential has more to give us than he is giving us at the moment." Nobody had to be that clear in Leipzig lately.
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