RB Leipzig’s CEO Oliver Mintzlaff has his club’s public communication about that ultimately canceled Europa League game against Spartak Moscow defended. At a press conference on Tuesday (03/01/2022), the 46-year-old said that they had contacted the European Football Union (UEFA) early on and campaigned for the game to be canceled.
Mintzlaff: “Negotiations in the background”
“We believe that the negotiations that we conducted in the background led to the right result,” said Mintzlaff, referring to the Russian club’s exclusion by UEFA on Monday (February 28, 2022). According to Mintzlaff, he contacted UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin on Friday (February 25, 2022) after the draw for the round of 16 and campaigned for the cancellation of the game.
Mintzlaff: “We put a lot of pressure on UEFA”
“He said I understand everything and there can only be one decision, but we want to make it. We are the organizers of the competition. We have decided that we will let UEFA make the decision. It has nothing to do with it that we have no sympathy,” explained Mintzlaff, referring to the war in Ukraine. “We didn’t wait for someone to make a decision for us, we put a lot of pressure behind the scenes that, given the overall situation, playing doesn’t make sense.”
Criticism of RBL information policy
RB official became emotional when he was asked about his club’s information policy and criticism from various media. The club had announced immediately after the draw that they wanted to play the game and were committed to holding it on neutral ground. RBL coach Domenico Tedesco explained on Sunday: “When the question of a boycott comes up, in my opinion it always hits the wrong people. It primarily affects the athletes and the fans.”
“How sick is that anyway?”
When it was expressed in various media and social networks that RB was not aggressively committed to a boycott, Mintzlaff said, close to tears: “It all affected us extremely. I am also emotionally touched and affected. And if you then have so much shit reads that you sometimes ask yourself how sick that actually is?”, and added: “We get criticism everywhere, but I once asked myself why there is a football game at all when there is war? I didn’t read it . We’d all have to face it.”
Dirk Hofmeister