After the hard-fought draw against Manchester City, RB Leipzig still has a good chance of a small sensation in the Champions League. The second half proved that with the right amount of courage, Leipzig can even stand up to the European elite.
“Those were two completely different halves,” said RB coach Marco Rose on Wednesday evening after the 1-1 (0-1) win against Manchester City, summing up the game. “In the first we weren’t in the Champions League mode, we ran after them and had little aggressiveness.” In the second half, Leipzig was then rewarded for their own courage and almost had to be accused of not having made enough of their own chances.
Due to the starting position everything is still open before the round of 16 second leg on March 14th in Manchester. A progress against the star ensemble of coach Pep Guardiola would be the next small sensation in Leipzig’s premier class history and is now even more realistic than before the first leg due to the extraordinary increase in performance.
Leipzig is lagging behind in the first half
Manchester took complete control of the game from the first minute in the sold-out arena with 45,228 spectators and patiently circulated the ball around the Leipzig penalty area with many game shifts. Without the star playmaker Kevin De Bruyne, who stayed in Manchester, but with the flexible Ilkay Gündogan, Riyad Mahrez and Bernardo Silva, the “Citizens” gained 76 percent ball possession in the half-spaces in front of the Leipzig defense in the first half.
RBL only allowed a little, didn’t get into the duels and just ran after the oppressively superior opponent. In this exhausting phase, City’s opening goal also came from Mahrez (27th), who, after a catastrophic bad pass from Xaver Schlager, was sent into the penalty area with a pass by Gündogan and was able to finish there calmly.
Unlucky Schlager later told in the MDR interview how his mistake came about: “They sent us to run and that was the problem. Then mistakes like this happen. Because when you have the ball, you have a heart rate of 180. And there Making the right decision is sometimes not that easy.” Nothing changed in the game after the goal. Manchester City had the ball and Leipzig were compact without giving Werner or Silva any counterattack opportunities. So there was almost no further chance to score until the break.
RB turns into a top team
From the 46th minute, a completely different game began. Leipzig went into the duels more courageously and also had a lot more confidence with the ball. The first real beneficiary of the new style of play was Benjamin Henrichs, who came on as a substitute at half-time. In the 55th minute, he fired a shot from inside the penalty area but put the ball just wide of the post.
“It’s brutal. You take it home with you and worry a lot when you lie in bed,” Henrichs said. The 26-year-old right-back couldn’t explain why Leipzig came out of the dressing room so transformed after the break: “Maybe we had the feeling that we had nothing left to lose? I don’t know.”
Rose explained at the press conference that this style of play was actually the plan from the start: “In the second half it was how we imagined it would be. We put City under pressure, had the ball a lot ourselves and played it what we have set ourselves as a whole”.
Leipzig at eye level and even beyond
In the 66th minute, Rose then brought on Christopher Nkunku, who caused further unrest in the opposing penalty area. The equalizer came just four minutes later. Josko Gvardiol climbed three heads higher from a corner Ruben Dias, England Footballer of the Year 2021, and headed in for a well-deserved equaliser.
The fact that Leipzig was able to act at eye level against the English champions and co-favorites for the Champions League title in this phase and even literally went above and beyond when equalizing shows that the team is capable of a lot. However, the young team learned on Wednesday evening that they have to focus on their own game even against the really big opponents. The aggressiveness, courage and vertical style of play that are so often crowned with success in the Bundesliga can even be enough against Manchester City on the right day. Maybe March 14, 2023 is such a day.
