There are also new observations
The club no longer bothers to cover up its marketing for the owner’s product. In a video with testimonials that was distributed before the game, the club is called “Red Bull Leipzig”, the troll post described also shows this.
“At RB you like the role of the bullying victim who just wants to belong normally,” she wrote “taz” before the final and this impression was reinforced in the reactions after the game.
We get stronger because everyone is against us – that’s the formula that’s maintained. However, it cannot be reconciled with the attempt to monopolize “the East”.
Don’t make an East-West issue out of it
“People stand by their home club. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania it’s often Hansa Rostock, in Thuringia Carl Zeiss Jena, in Saxony it can be Dynamo Dresden or Chemie Leipzig or Lok Leipzig”, says Detlef Mueller.
The deputy chairman of the SPD parliamentary group is attached to Chemnitzer FC and Borussia Dortmund. “But I also have to say that if I want to see top-class football, I go to RB,” says the spokesman for the Saxony state group in his parliamentary group, who lives in Chemnitz. Müller took part in the discussions on Twitter about the RB construct at the weekend. There was no congratulations on the win from him either.
Müller didn’t want to blame the club for the fact that Tino Chrupalla, the national spokesman for the far-right AfD, congratulated Leipzig’s success as a victory of “Saxon steadfastness and Austrian entrepreneurial spirit” over “political correctness” without the club refusing the congratulations: “They cannot defend themselves against applause from the wrong side. Sometimes it’s better to leave it uncommented.”
In an interview with the sports show, the social democrat resisted making the likes and dislikes of RB Leipzig an East-West issue. A text published in the Leipziger Volkszeitung for the cup final carried this discussion into social networks.
Much continues to be mixed up when it comes to criticism of RB
“It seems as if it could hardly be a coincidence, but RB is claiming a region in the east that has already experienced what the club is facing. It is very familiar with malice and with the feeling of not really belonging. The but also knows how to draw strength from the disparaging looks of others and to draw something good: a feeling of cohesion,” the text says.
“Oh dear”said Mueller, “That’s too bombastic for me. Trenches are dug up that haven’t been there for a long time.” An RB Leipzig that longs for recognition as a target of Mecker-Wessis, just because it is in the east, also serves a long-outdated cliché: “It’s not true that the East is in a vale of tears.”
Red Bull St. Pauli was also constantly criticized by those who understood long ago that it’s not about the quality of Leipzig football. Not because other clubs are also fully commercialized, have sponsors, have different legal forms. It’s not about not recognizing good work. It’s about RB getting around the 50+1 rule, but others are doing that too.
However, most of these points not only miss the core of the criticism, they have absolutely nothing to do with it. At its core, RB Leipzig was not founded to play football, but to advertise with a huge budget – with football. That is the unique selling point.
Congratulations!