Jürgen Klopp goes to Red Bull. Many people shake their heads. The football romantic and the football villain. That doesn’t fit. Well, yes. Top global football generally has little to do with romance. Everything is about money, money and money. In Salzburg, Leipzig – also at Liverpool FC, where Klopp worked.
At least Red Bull is to some extent about football. Salzburg has been demonstrating for years how success can be achieved: with a well-thought-out game idea, modern coaches, young talent and immense transfer proceeds. A win-win situation for club and audience. Traditionalists, however, complained about the company’s commercial intentions and the Bulls’ long-standing dominance in the Austrian league. Permanent Red Bull champion. Just blandness.
The commitment to cans has given football a lot. There is the ÖFB national team, which only really blossomed with the RB style of play, an RB coach and players trained at RB. And the Bundesliga was also inspired by the Bulls: with a great style of play and a holistic concept.
Sturm Graz and Rapid Vienna now also play like Salzburg.
The Bulls may not be football romantics – they are definitely football lovers. Tradition is important. But many long-established clubs only stand for their history. Red Bull, on the other hand, played some nice football.
Nevertheless, the cops are considered villains. Also because the shower company once grabbed Austria Salzburg and coldly erased colors and tradition. But Salzburgers, who were ailing at the time, would most likely have disappeared from the picture’s weakness. And in the second major RB branch in Leipzig, Klopp also says, Red Bull didn’t take anything away from anyone. “Would Leipzig otherwise be on the football map? If they weren’t. Then, like Dresden, they would be bobbing between the second and third leagues.” In the RB initial phase, as Klopp explained in 2022, “money may have played a big role”. But: “That hasn’t been the case for a long time.” Rather, the brewery company is pursuing a “football idea, not a money idea.” In Liverpool, for example, Klopp is said to have earned 20 million euros a year, at Red Bull, it is said, it was less than half.
If you look closely, you’ll notice that Klopp and Red Bull aren’t that far apart. Also in sporting terms. The coach Klopp has always been a product of the zeitgeist and modernity.
Klopp, a bull – that is still a shock for football romantics. Red Bull is the company that owns football clubs all over the world and moves players around like you’re playing Monopoly. The accusation is that Red Bull is just using football – for marketing reasons for a trashy can.
Klopp has so far been considered one of the good guys in the increasingly evil football business. A rocker and lateral spirit. One that made the yellow fan wall in Dortmund and Anfield Road in Liverpool shake. Someone who roared and raged. So emotion and authenticity embodied. Red Bull, on the other hand, has always been considered anti-knock: everything is just plastic and sugar water.
Now he should give Red Bull what they can’t buy despite all the millions they’ve spent: a soul. Klopp is a huge brand. Perhaps the most popular German. Someone who toiled in the working-class cities of Dortmund and Liverpool and embodied the image of being a normal person. He himself said he was the “normal one”. Now fans think he has become “The Cans One”.
But maybe it’s not that easy here either. Even as a Mainz coach, when Klopp was not yet a well-known face, he was happy to be invited by corporations for lectures and paid handsomely. Quick money, he explained frankly. As a global star, Klopp finally became the face of advertising. Here, too, he freely admitted that it was easy money. Day of shooting, check here, departure.
If you look closely, you’ll notice that Klopp and Red Bull aren’t that far apart. Also in sporting terms. The coach Klopp has always been a product of the zeitgeist and modernity. Not a well-known footballer, just a second division player, but still a visionary coach who worked his way up to the great Liverpool FC on his own strength and shaped an era there. That is also the spirit that surrounds the Red Bull kick. Everything is possible. With young kickers, unknown coaches, an inspiring style of play – and a great vision.
Perhaps Klopp has always been more Red Bull than romantic.
