The first time RB Leipzig ran through the Bundesliga, Atlético was still licking their wounds after losing the Milan Champions League final to Real Madrid on penalties. As Simeone meditated on the couch, Dietrich Mateschitz , the millionaire owner of Red Bull, rubbed his hands after a handful of years chasing the dream of having a soccer team in Germany. The history of Leipzig's elite can be summed up in these four years in which the rojiblanco team has had to mutate and rebuild, always hand in hand with Cholo, who was already in Madrid when Leipzig was just a happy idea that was sailing through German regional categories.

To get a corner in the German shop window, the owner of the famous energy drinks had to save a wall of obstacles. The main one: that of financial doping and the 50 + 1 rule, which prevents clubs from being acquired by more than 50% by a company, so that the majority of votes are in the hands of the clubs and their partners. His move was to buy in 2009 the place that SSV Markranstäd t had in the fifth division for about 350,000 euros. The next day, there was hardly a partition left of that team. And today RB Leipzig, whose initials that precede the name of the city are not (officially) for Red Bull but for RasenBallsport (something like The sport of the ball on the pitch), is the least sympathetic team in the country, whose partners do not they have no say. On more than one occasion they have received him by throwing a bull's head from the stands. As it is.

They all don't care. The fact is that today they are in the quarterfinals of the Champions League, where they have already participated three times, despite their short history. Next year, after finishing third in the Bundesliga, they will also be there. And in command of the operations will be its technician Julien Nagelsmann , 33 years old, who embodies many of the peculiarities that accompany that creed of the energetic bulls. Young but well prepared, what would that famous television advertisement from another era say. When he sat on the bench at Hoffenheim to rescue him from relegation, Leipzig were finalizing the details of his jump to the Bundesliga. He was 28 years old.

Injuries prevented him from being a player

Even today Nagelsmann remains convinced that he could have been a good footballer. "He would not have been a top player, but he had talent to play as a professional," he assured Marca in an interview. At the age of 20, knee injuries ended up convincing him by force that the best option to remain linked to football was from the bench. And with that intention, he stayed next to his friend Thomas Tuchel , today PSG coach, at Augsburg and was climbing until Hoffenheim gave him the alternative on February 11, 2016. Perhaps today he would not be sitting on the stadium bench José Alvalade, closely watching the stampedes of his Leipzig, of having been seduced by Real Madrid. In 2018, after Zidane's surprise slam, he received the call from the white team's offices.

His energetic football, injected with pressure and sustained by a good handling of the ball and an outstanding physical tone, will not have the killer Timo Werner (34 goals and 13 assists). Although his departure to Chelsea was known long ago and Nagelsmann has already put the puzzle back together so that his boys (24 years on average), who made Mou's Tottenham blush, stand up to Atlético. «The experience is not going to be important. Atleti does not have it in this format either, "he acknowledged yesterday, before the last training session. Dani Olmo , who could have been rojiblanco, and Angeliño will put the Spanish accent on Leipzig.

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