As the maker of Borussia Mönchengladbach, Max Eberl criticized player changes between the RB clubs Salzburg and Leipzig as “bumping” – now he sees things a little differently.
Leipzig manager Max Eberl has defended player transfers from Austrian first division football club RB Salzburg to sister club RB Leipzig.
“In the long run, I’m just trying to get the best players to Leipzig – and if the best player is playing for a possible replacement for Konni Laimer in Salzburg, then I’ll keep looking around there,” said the 49-year-old before the Top game against Borussia Dortmund on DAZN. A few days ago, midfielder Nicolas Seiwald was announced – the 21-year-old will be the 20th player to move from Salzburg to Leipzig since 2010.
“He’s very young, he’s very hungry, great potential – so a perfect RB transfer,” Eberl explained about the Seiwald commitment. During his tenure as manager of Borussia Mönchengladbach, the current RB manager had criticized transfers between the RB clubs Leipzig and Salzburg. “What bothers me about RB is this pushing of players from Salzburg to Leipzig and from Leipzig to Salzburg. That has a bad aftertaste for me because they basically have two squads,” Eberl said in a 2016 interview with Focus Online.
Eberl: “The world has turned in football”
“I said something about it as an opponent at the time. Seven years later, the world has turned in football,” Eberl now explained his change of mind. Salzburg is a club “where we look, so we have no advantage,” said Eberl. “As with any other club, we will try to bring the best players to Leipzig.”
Eberl also commented on the former Mainz and Schalke official Rouven Schröder, who is about to become a sports director in Leipzig. The 47-year-old is “of course a great professional,” praised Eberl. “If everything then works out as it seems, then we have a great sporting reinforcement to further strengthen the sporting team around the squad.”
RB is very ambitious, so you want to “position yourself very, very strongly”. Eberl named Dortmund and Bayern Munich as sporting competitors. Schröder most recently worked as sports director for FC Schalke 04, where he resigned at the end of October last year for personal reasons.
UEFA allowed both Red Bull clubs to compete in Europe in 2017
Leipzig and Salzburg both have the Austrian beverage manufacturer Red Bull as their main sponsor. The stadiums of both clubs are called Red Bull Arena, the logos of both clubs each have two red bulls. UEFA ruled in 2017 that both clubs could compete in European competitions at the same time, as structural changes meant that no natural or legal person controlled more than one of the two clubs.