Jürgen Klopp’s charming offensive as Red Bull’s global football director began on Tuesday in Salzburg, Austria, as the former Liverpool manager officially took up his new role and responded to critics of the move.
Klopp’s decision to hire the energy drink giant to expand his branded football clubs around the world has baffled fans of his previous clubs, specifically in Germany, where as coach he led Mainz to promotion to the Bundesliga in 2004, and then Borussia Dortmund to the Bundesliga titles in 2011 and 2012.
On Sunday, Klopp in Leipzig to see the Red Bull-backed team return to fourth place with a 4-2 win over Werder Bremen.
“I thought, do they not deserve good football?” Klopp asked, referring to the Leipzig supporters. “I really felt they deserve it. And it’s not only there, it’s in Salzburg, the football fans in New York deserve it if they want to be part of that journey, in Japan, in Brazil, they deserve support, improvement, all these kind of things. That’s why I want to do it. I love football.”
But Klopp joins an organization that many enthusiasts in Germany consider the antithesis of everything they love about Array.
Mainz fans responded with protests when Red Bull announced Klopp’s signing in October.
“Have you forgotten everything we gave you?” asked an anti-Leipzig banner, referencing Klopp’s tearful farewell speech when he left the club after 18 years as player and coach in 2008.
Klopp’s decision also stung in Dortmund.
“Jürgen knows very well that he can have almost chosen his place at Borussia Dortmund,” the club’s general manager Hans-Joachim Watzke told Sport Bild last month.
Watzke said he remained friends with Klopp, but that they would no longer be able talk about Dortmund. Watzke had previously said that Leipzig only existed as a marketing campaign.
“Football is played there to get a drinks can to perform,” Watzke said in 2016.
Red Bull will pay tribute to co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz for coming up with “not only a new product but also an exclusive marketing concept” when he introduced the drink in 1987.
Red Bull, which announced a record turnover of €10. 5 billion in 2023, started locally with an investment in extreme sports in Austria in 1988. The following year, it entered motor sport by sponsoring Austrian Formula 1 driver Gerhard Berger, and went abroad in 1994, through the sponsorship of windsurfers Robthrough Naish and Björn Dunkerbeck.
The company’s foray into football began in 2005, when it bought SV Austria Salzburg and changed the club’s name with its own livery. Despite opposition from the club’s supporters, the purple left the club in favour of Red Bull’s red and white, and the club was renamed Red Bull Salzburg.
The company repeated the feat in Germany in 2009 when it purchased the playing license of fifth-tier SSV Markranstädt, and rebranded the club as it had Salzburg. The club was named Rasenballsport (lawn-ball-sport) Leipzig as the company was prohibited from using its name for the club. But it financed the team’s steady ascent to the Bundesliga, which it reached in 2016.
Klopp will oversee a host of Red Bull-backed clubs around the world, which also include the New York Red Bulls, Bragantino in Brazil and Omiya Ardija in Japan. The company also has a minority stake in English second-division club Leeds and will become a minority shareholder in French second-division club Paris FC, which Klopp watched in action on Saturday.
“I think if you need to understand, you can understand; If you don’t need to understand, you probably won’t understand. “That’s the way it is,” Klopp said of the criticism.
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