Paris Saint-Germain or RB Leipzig will triumph in the Champions League final for the first time midweek, but the prospect of these incredibly ambitious clubs competing in the quarter-finals in Lisbon can be an obstacle for many football fans.
When UEFA President Aleksander Ceferin spoke to the AFP last week about the long track record of elite European football, he observed that the game had “something different from what it was 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago.”
Ceferin spoke in particular about the desire to replace the rules of money fair play after the appeal of Manchester City’s success against a two-year Champions League ban.
But his argument is much more than that.
Ten years ago, Inter Milan won the Champions League by beating Bayern Munich in the final. Bayern had Lyon in the quarter-finals.
The groups will face off in the semi-finals on Wednesday after Lyon’s unexpected good fortune against City, who has not yet triumphed in the Champions League final 12 years after the club’s inauguration in Abu Dhabi.
Also in 2010, PSG won the French Cup, but finished 13th in Ligue 1. They weren’t going anywhere fast. Leipzig, meanwhile, had just risen to fourth place in German football.
In 2011, PSG acquired through the state-funded Qatar Sports Investments and continued to trample the festival in France, winning Ligue 1 in seven of the past 8 years.
They paid the two biggest movement fees in history to point out Neymar and Kylian Mbappé in 2017 and it’s a wonder it took them so long to succeed again in a Champions League semi-final, 25 years after their first and final appearance.
“It’s very special. It’s the first time we’ve reached the semi-finals. It’s history for the club,” said PSG president Nasser Al-Khelaifi, after his quarter-final victory over Atalanta, which gave the impression that it was another club that had lost to AC Milan in the 1995 semi-finals.
In maximum cases, this is the case. PSG is now the fifth richest club in world football, according to Deloitte’s Football Money League. Its sales in 2018/19 were 635.9 million euros (753 million dollars).
Fans of other clubs mock PSG’s lack of tradition, as it was not founded until 1970. But they are real veterans compared to Leipzig.
The German club was founded in 2009 when energy drinks giant Red Bull purchased the pet shorts license from the fifth SSV Markranstadt department, creating RasenBallsport Leipzig.
“RasenBallsport” is a fabricated German word, a way to overcome Red Bull’s challenge that, according to the rules of the German Football League (DFL), a team supports the call of a sponsor.
They also circumvented the so-called “50-1” LDF rule in a position to save any individual from having a majority stake in a club.
Red Bull, founded through Austrian billionaire Dietrich Mateschitz, owns 49%, and the remaining 51% is in the hands of corporate employees.
Even before appearing in the Bundesliga in 2016, Leipzig was hated by the club’s supporters.
Dynamo Dresden enthusiasts threw a severed bull’s head into the field a fit between the teams. Borussia Dortmund enthusiasts have boycotted the opposing fites of Leipzig in protest against the club’s ownership structure.
Unlike PSG, Leipzig’s football style focuses on signing and training young people.
However, the cult magazine of German football 11Freunde responded to Leipzig’s quarter-final victory over Atletico Madrid by saying it would dominate its semi-final.
“RB Leipzig is a natural marketing project. Created only for the Red Bull brand,” he wrote, calling the club “an imitation.”
The Red Bull team also owns Salzburg, which also played in the Champions League this season, the New York Red Bulls and Red Bull Bragantino, who have just reached the most sensible in Brazil.
In Leipzig, RB has at least revived a culture of good fortune in football: Lokomotiv Leipzig, a leading club of former East Germany, UEFA Cup semi-finalist in 1974 and runner-up to the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1987.
PSG and RB Leipzig are now within the success of the Champions League final, but impartiality can be thin on the pitch.
[AFP]
Vanguard News Nigeria.
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