Après fizz
As Red Bull's energy football goes out of style, it's leaving frantic, effervescent players like Brenden Aaronson marooned on uncertain, shifting terrain, trying to learn what RB never taught them.
Did anyone else take a gulp of guilt after the West Ham game when Daniel Farke described Brenden Aaronson as 'polarising'? It kinda makes staying with them forever through all the ups and downs stick in the throat when the manager is pointing out, quite clearly, how clearly one of the players is disliked. And liked. We liked him on Friday night.
Nights like Friday are probably why Aaronson was bought, but the hitch has always been that nights like Friday are not what Leeds United fans want Leeds United to be about. Which is what Victor Orta, who handed the £25 million pounds over for Aaronson, misunderstood. It was all part of the same mistake that brought Jesse Marsch to Leeds, of thinking that the 'Keep Fighting' signs in Don Revie's changing rooms were a self-contained message. Fighting was important, yes, but fighting was never an end in itself. The point was to keep fighting to play football. Fight until the ball was at Johnny Giles' feet, being chipped towards Eddie Gray, so he could beat two players and cross for Allan Clarke to score with an elegant header.
Leeds had, with Marcelo Bielsa, established their right to play. But after sacking him, Orta's plan was wholesale importation of the now quite unnecessary fighting part from Red Bull's factory. Aaronson. Marsch. Tyler Adams. Rasmus Kristensen. Need I go on? Victor did: Max Wöber. That scheme tipped Leeds back into the Championship, leaving Brenden Aaronson at Elland Road as its last reluctant remnant.
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The Red Bull concept Orta was buying into was not so much factory as laboratory, a data-driven research and development project for aligning how to play football with how to sell drinks. The key term was energy, energy football for energy drinks. Running, counter-pressing, disruption, transitions, verticality, speed: in essence, tackle and run to goal and shoot. And it wasn't only designed to elevate their own clubs in Salzburg, Leipzig, New York, Brazil and so on. Like a megachurch it was to send its missionaries into the world — Marsch, Ralf Rangnick, Ralph Hasenhüttl as coaches, half Leeds United's team circa 2022 as players — to multiply the number of clubs worldwide demonstrating Red Bull's tactical influence. From W-M formation, to 4-4-2, to the sweeper system, to Red Bull. Erling Haaland is meant to be their brand representative at Manchester City. At Liverpool it's Dominik Szoboszlai. Tyler Adams is evangelising at, well, Bournemouth. But also by captaining the USMNT.
This is turning out to be a good strategy for Red Bull because the idea of Fizzy Ball as a coherent team philosophy is losing its lustre. After ten consecutive Austrian Bundesliga titles, their Zombie Salzburg team have lost the last two to Strum Graz and trail them this season, too. Last season RB Leipzig finished 7th in the Bundesliga and 32nd of 36 in the Champions League league phase. Salzburg were 34th. New York Red Bulls finished 10th this year in the MLS Eastern Conference, failing to qualify for the post-season championship for the first time in fifteen seasons.
Trying to adopt the RB philosophy wholesale took Leeds down. The only team below Leeds in the 2022/23 Premier League was the wreckage of Ralph Hasenhüttl's RB-inspired Southampton. He was sacked by Wolfsburg last season. After five years being promoted as the all-action future of football, the last five years of diminishing returns have raised a lot of questions about Red Bull's philosophical viability. This likely explains Jurgen Klopp being paid handsomely to stand in front of their failing clubs, grinning, talking about how great it all is.
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