Berlin (AFP)

With the Leipzig semi-final in the Champions League, four years after its accession to the Bundesliga, the Austrian brand Red Bull has just taken an important step towards its ultimate ambition: to settle at the top of European football.

Of course, the enthusiasm of the young German team was shattered against the star workforce of Paris SG (3-0). But the feat is no less great, and likely to worry those who have never accepted the intrusion of Red Bull in football.

"The anti-Leipzig can breathe!", Exclaimed Wednesday morning the daily Tagesspiegel of Berlin, "the defeat of RB Leipzig is a victory for the supporters of the folklore of football".

Those who, like Borussia Dortmund boss Hans-Joachim Watzke, believe that Leipzig "only plays football to sell cans", will probably have been reinforced in their vision by the campaign organized in Lisbon by the RB.

Only of the eight clubs in the final tournament, Leipzig had 1,400 promotional posters put up in town, highlighting its players. But how can we not see it as an advertising campaign for Red Bull?

- Far from the European giants -

However, each success of the men in the red and white jersey contributes to bring the RB into normality. For four years, poll after poll, the club has been increasingly appreciated by German football fans.

From a sporting point of view, the project is interesting. No policy of buying "galactics" like Real Madrid or PSG, but a group of players at the start of their careers, who are quickly given experience by giving them responsibilities.

Economically, growth is controlled. The club is still light years away from European behemoths like Paris, Munich, Liverpool or Real in terms of salaries and market value of the workforce.

Coach Julian Nagelsmann is moreover lucid: moving from the current status to that of European greats will be much more difficult than moving from the Fifth Division to the Bundesliga. “Developing at the same speed as in the last eleven years will be a huge challenge,” admits the 33-year-old coach.

The leaders do not intend to be intoxicated by their European adventure. "We will continue to evolve within the framework which was ours before this final 8", assures the boss Oliver Mintzlaff, dismissing the idea of ​​spending fortunes to acquire stars.

Because the project is a long-term project, led by the 76-year-old Austrian founder of Red Bull and now billionaire, Dietrich Mateschitz, who has long made sport a formidable vehicle for notoriety for his brand of energy drinks.

- "Great enemy of football" -

After investing in the world of extreme sports in the 1990s, he tackled Formula 1. Hired as a manufacturer in 2005, Red Bull was crowned world champion in 2010, first in a series of four consecutive titles until 2013.

At the same time, Mateschitz was maturing an even more grandiose project: to impose himself in football, the king sport on the planet.

RB Leipzig, the instrument of this ambition, has grown rapidly: founded in 2009 in the fifth division, promoted in 2016 to the Bundesliga, semi-finalist in the Champions League four years later!

To the "romantics", who see in this model the ultimate alienation of the game from commercial values, the realists answer that Bayern and its all-powerful sponsors Adidas, Audi or Allianz, PSG and Manchester City with their Qatari and Emirati funding, or Juventus with the Agnelli family, have been evolving for a long time in a world where money dominates everything.

"It is hypocritical to see RB Leipzig as the great enemy of football," the Tagesspiegel commented on Wednesday: "Those who think so live in their own small personal world. Not in the reality of football".

Wasn't Leipzig beaten on Tuesday by PSG, whose workforce is worth nearly a billion euros? Red Bull, with its group at 500 million, is still far from the mark, if it wants to win the Champions League one day.

© 2020 AFP