After the worst first half in the club’s history, the pros from RB Leipzig rushed into Christmas break immediately, leaving their coach Domenico Tedesco with a mountain of work.
The totally realistic 0-2 match against outnumbered newcomer Armenia Bielefeld not only showed that the change of coach from Jesse Marsh to Tedesco is not enough to bring about a sustainable recovery in the Saxon German football team. The bankruptcy also exposed cracks in the team deeper than previously assumed.
“Everyone has to take responsibility and ask if they are giving 100 percent. It got emotional in the dressing room,” said defense chief Willy Urban and went straight to his neighbor Nordi Mukele. He was offended when he was substituted at 0:1. Urban was not himself He had noticed the scene, but said, “This would only be serious and mature behaviour, but it was naive and destructive to the team.”
“Lots of good players”
Tedesco’s analysis also left plenty of room for speculation about the broken runner-up’s team spirit. “Overall we have many, many good individual players,” said the 36-year-old. However, that wasn’t enough in the third game of his term, and instead Bielefeld scored through Jani Serra and Masaya Okogawa. Among the attackers, Fabian Klos has seen the red card for a foul on Orban, even Armenia played the last 20 minutes outnumbered. “One hundred percent naive” was how Tedesco described his team’s performance, which made good performances against Gladbach and in Augsburg forgotten.
The first round of disaster in Leipzig read terribly in terms of numbers. League leaders Munich have almost twice as many points as right-back RB with 22 points with 43 points. Even in Dortmund there are 12 points, which their president Hans-Joachim Watzky commented on before the match. Half a year or nine months ago everyone wrote: The people of Leipzig will overtake Dortmund in second place in German football. I haven’t noticed much of that in the past year, Watzke said on BVB-TV.
For Leipzig, re-qualification to the Champions League is more important than the role of the second player. After all, when it comes to salary costs, it has long reached the first division of the league and club president Oliver Mintzlaff is demanding a corresponding return. Fourth place isn’t far off yet, but the Bundesliga match plan has some delicacies ready for the second half of the season. Matches against Bayern, Dortmund and Leverkusen are all at a distance. In addition, there are annoying tasks such as games in Bochum and graduation in Bielefeld.
longer rest
Understandably, Tedesco didn’t like the fact that he had to let his players go on vacation right after the Bielefeld game and only see them again on January 2. The plan was drawn up by the predecessor’s march. “I would have liked to train on December 27 or 28 to have some time. Together we decided to stick with that plan. Overall, you’re likely to earn more,” Tedesco said.
But for substitute goalkeeper Josep Martinez, this initially led to the loss of the company’s car. When Tedesco was still answering media questions in the belly of the Leipzig Arena, the 21-year-old rammed his car into an airport shuttle bus during a botched maneuver. Martinez was unhurt and in Cottage one hopes this will be the only serious damage of the season.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 211219-99-439919 / 2
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