RB Leipzig and PSG: With heartfelt dislike

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Julian Nagelsmann doesn't need tradition to be successful

Football lives from taking sides. It's really not about "the better should win", it's about "your own club should win". Basically no matter how. And when in the evening there is a duel between two teams who are not among their own favorite teams, the very first question arises, consciously or unconsciously: "Who am I for now?"

A question that was easier to answer than in today's semi-finals of the Champions League between RB Leipzig and Paris Saint-Germain.

On the one hand with Leipzig the club that was created a little more than ten years ago on the green field, which many still call not a club, but a construct, rose from the fifth class after taking over the license from Markranstädt, the Alt Then overtaking clubs at turbo pace, consciously whistling about tradition, even flirting aggressively with the fact that one has nothing to do with it. The self-proclaimed modernity. Lo and behold: there is another newcomer from Salzburg.

Recognized, not loved

On the other hand, the club that was raised to the highest spheres with the money from Qatar. The club that can nonchalantly invest 222 million euros for striker Neymar, who are interested in financial fair play and the customs of the transfer market at best when the issue is being negotiated again before the international sports court. An association that is personally and economically intertwined with the emirate and its regime in an unhealthy way. Although it is difficult to imagine being intertwined with Qatar in a healthy way.

Both clubs are looked after by highly talented German coaches, Julian Nagelsmann and Thomas Tuchel, who are quite similar in their ambition and obsession, also with their stinging streak. Respected, professionally recognized, with the discipline to conquer the hearts of fans in flight, there is still a little lack of it.

For days, there has been a heated argument in public and, as expected, especially on social media, how to deal with the success of RB Leipzig. The makers of the soccer magazine "11 Freunde" serve their target group of the tradition-conscious and ignore the RB success with many words, on the other hand there are comments elsewhere like this one here on RBB-Inforadio, which describe the rejection of RB as hypocritical. The arguments are well known, it is a ten year old dispute, rekindled by the international success of RB.

Not only is love a strong emotion

There are so many ways to watch football. There is the intellectual, the economic approach to football, you can try it with a downright surgical analysis, but in the end, if you want to explore the fascination of this sport, you end up with the emotion. If you are for a club, you are logically against a club at the same time. Anyone who sells "love" or even "real love" in football will, conversely, also deal with the other side. Hate may be an ugly word, it is also an ugly feeling, but in any case it is also a strong emotion, a football emotion. Dislike is a special form of affection in football.

That is why it has always seemed strange when football watchers in the European Cup suddenly switch to clubs that they detest in the league. Just because they are German clubs, because it benefits the five-year rating or the Uefa coefficient. A permissible point of view, certainly, but a very sober, very cool, actually a football-untypical perspective. Suddenly you're a Bayern fan. How can that be?

You can recognize the work that RB Leipzig and PSG are doing, including the cleverness that reigns there. You even have to. It is clear that RB now has a fan base that is certainly related to a certain local patriotism and the sporting success of the team. And that there are football fans who are interested in Leipzig or Hoffenheim precisely because they are bored with the constant talk of traditionalists. It will be similar in Paris. All of these are there and, of course, they are legitimate.

So too is the right not to like these clubs.

The modernists, if you like to call them that, prefer to point out that the so-called traditional associations are at least as thoroughly gentrified and commercialized as the nouveau riche. The exchange-oriented BVB, the FC Schalke, which is supported by Gazprom and Tönnies, and so on. Clearly, to contradict that would be completely ridiculous. And the unequal treatment in football is more between Bayern Munich and VfL Bochum than between FC Bayern and RB Leipzig.

The difference that Dortmund, Schalke and Co. have moved to where they are now over many decades, while in Leipzig the process was carried out as a success planned from the beginning, so to speak, in a rapid capitalist run, remains. The investor clubs have to live with this flaw - and also with the enemy.

On Wednesday, FC Bayern and Olympique Lyon will play against each other in the second semi-final. It is then much easier to make a decision.