Red Bull buying Leeds from Massimo Cellino – was the rumour ever real? - The Athletic 13/6/22
By Phil Hay
Three months on from a day of legal claims and
counterclaims, the case of Jean-Kevin Augustin is still in the hands of the
Court of Arbitration for Sport.
In keeping with the entire saga, there was no swift
resolution to the dispute; no expedited verdict on whether Leeds United or RB
Leipzig should shoulder the cost of a transfer which did not happen or how the
tangle would straighten itself out.
As the argument over Augustin brewed and intensified,
eventually landing on the desk of CAS in March, relations between Leeds and the
Red Bull empire grew more and more strained.
Yet in spite of the bad feeling, channels of communication
were stable enough to allow the Premier League club to complete the signings of
Brenden Aaronson and Rasmus Kristensen from Red Bull Salzburg as soon as last
season finished, proving that even organisations in dispute can find a way to
do business.
Red Bull is seeking £18 million in compensation for
Augustin, the fee Leeds were due to pay for him two years ago, but by selling
Aaronson and Kristensen to the same club, their Salzburg branch have raised a
separate £35 million — money that will support the Austrian club’s model of
signing emerging talent and cashing in on those players a little further down
the line to turn a healthy profit.
Leeds and Red Bull are presently intertwined: fighting on
one front, negotiating on others and crossing paths with regularity.
Even Leeds’ head coach, Jesse Marsch, held three of his previous four managerial jobs in the Red Bull stable of clubs across three different countries, and is a man the energy drink company know inside out.
Leeds, as a fanbase and a cultural entity, see themselves as
the antithesis of Red Bull’s style of football investment.
Red Bull is the corporate machine, a financial powerhouse
that thinks nothing of renaming clubs, redesigning shirts and rebranding in
whichever ways suit its strategy. The group is extraordinarily thick-skinned at
riding out criticism and ignoring the accusation that its clubs are built for
the plastic generation.
Leeds, in contrast, thrive on authenticity, on old-school
ideas about what football should be.
They are the club where a highly unpopular attempt by then
new owner Andrea Radrizzani to alter their badge in January 2018 died a death
in the space of six hours, buried by an onslaught of public opposition.
There was a time, though, when the prospect of Red Bull
buying Leeds United was more than a bad dream on the streets of Beeston.
Red Bull is yet to branch out into the English leagues. But
for more than a year of Massimo Cellino’s spell as owner of Leeds, investment
by the drinks conglomerate — which also owns a football club in Brazil, a
Formula 1 team and has sponsored a string of events around the world ranging
from extreme sports to volleyball — was the cause of conversation around the
Yorkshire club, with some of the chatter fuelled by Cellino himself.
The prospect came to nothing and it has not reared its head
since but several people who were involved at a senior level at Elland Road in
2014 and 2015 believe the interest was real; that, in that period, Leeds were
genuinely on the Red Bull radar.
By late 2014, Red Bull was a long way into the process of
building its global network of football teams. It had stepped into the market
by acquiring SV Austria Salzburg in 2005 and rebranding them as Red Bull
Salzburg. It was using a different Austrian club, FC Liefering, as a feeder
side for Salzburg, almost the equivalent of a reserve team.
Four years later in Germany, SSV Markranstadt — a minor club
based near Leipzig, playing far below the Bundesliga — became RasenBallsport
Leipzig (RB Leipzig). Meanwhile, in MLS, the Metrostars had become the New York
Red Bulls, a club Marsch would join as head coach in 2015.
This expansion of the football group was aggressive and
there was major funding behind it. Resistance to the aesthetic changes Red Bull
tried to implement did not dissuade the firm from pressing ahead.
Cellino, by the end of 2014, had owned Leeds for several
months.
Very little was straightforward with the Italian. He secured
control of Leeds on appeal, having initially been declared in breach of the
EFL’s owners’ and directors’ test but the EFL bided its time and returned to
hit him with an ownership ban in late 2014, a punishment relating to tax
evasion cases in Italy.
Cellino was a survivor and a hard man to control but his
suspension had the effect of making Leeds look like a club for sale; a business
which, in the circumstances, he might have little choice but to sell.
In November that year, with the EFL mobilising to disqualify
Cellino, a story ran in the Daily Mail about the possibility of a bid for the
club arriving from Red Bull. The news stemmed from an intermediary claiming to
represent the firm asking for and securing a meeting with Cellino in the UK.
Cellino was indignant, calling the story “disrespectful” and
dismissing it as unfounded. “We talked with an agent who was working for Red
Bull but I’d never met him before and I don’t know what Red Bull wants to do,”
Cellino said. “I’m not selling the club.”
Red Bull was not in the habit of responding freely to
speculation — its financial clout meant rumours about further growth in its
football project were not unusual — but in this instance, it took the time to
respond publicly if briefly. “We can confirm that Red Bull has no plans to take
over Leeds United nor take a stake in the club,” a statement read in full.
The claim had hit a wall in the space of 72 hours, slapped
down by both sides.
But then, three months later, came a development that made
Red Bull’s interest in Leeds look and sound considerably more tangible.
It involved Leeds Fans Utd (LFU), a new supporters’ group
that had been set up with the aim of purchasing a minority stake in Leeds using
money raised via pledges from the club’s fanbase. The idea was that by buying a
shareholding, Leeds’ support would have a little input into the running and
management of the club, and potentially a voice in the boardroom. Within three
months of forming, LFU’s drive for funds had raised around £400,000.
Cellino’s EFL suspension and doubts about the sustainability
of his ownership prompted LFU to seek engagement with potential buyers of the
club, to discuss with them the possibility of future fan involvement. In
February 2015, the group received an email from a well-regarded UK football
agent, presenting them with a proposal. High-level officials from Red Bull were
willing to speak with LFU’s representatives if LFU’s representatives were
willing to travel to a meeting place in London’s Soho Square.
The email purported to be offering face-to-face discussions
with three people: Ralf Rangnick, Red Bull’s then sporting director, Oliver
Mintzlaff, its head of global soccer, and a legal representative by the name of
Florian Muller.
There was no express detail about what Red Bull was planning
or what exactly it wanted to discuss. LFU was never able to say unequivocally
if the suggestion of a meeting was genuine or all that it seemed. Nonetheless,
there seemed no reason to suggest a discussion like that if Red Bull was not at
least considering the option of buying into Leeds.
But LFU turned the invitation down after asking for
assurances that if Red Bull considered investing in Leeds, it would give
supporters veto over issues like renaming the club, changing the colour of
their strip or renaming Elland Road. The intermediary could not make those
promises and the communication ended there.
Cellino, at that moment, was absent from England, serving
his penance. Leeds were officially in the hands of Eleonora Sport Ltd, the firm
he had used to buy the club. Cellino, despite suggestions to the contrary,
convinced the EFL that he was detached from the Elland Road boardroom
completely, uninvolved in any decision-making while his ban was ongoing. But in
April 2015, as that suspension drew to a close, the Red Bull investment story
popped up again.
Cellino responded to an initial media enquiry by saying it
was “not true, just another story” — only to rapidly change his tune by phoning
the same outlet back five minutes later. “There is an offer,” he insisted. “I
didn’t know about it but I spoke just now with Giampaolo Caboni, one of the
directors of Eleonora Sport. He said Red Bull has made an offer for the club.
The shareholders will have to think about it. I don’t know what they will do.”
Again, Red Bull were quick to respond. “Another involvement in football is not
planned,” Mintzlaff told the German media. It was as clear as the first denial
six months earlier.
One former employee who worked with Cellino at Leeds has
told The Athletic that, while he was never privy to any meetings, he was under
the impression that Red Bull’s interest in the club was more than
tittle-tattle.
When it came to the club’s ownership structure and the
possibility of selling equity, Cellino was not in the habit of sharing
information with staff around him but many of them had picked up on the Red
Bull link. Another ex-staff member said that for all the talk about Red Bull,
there was never a point where senior employees at the club believed a sale was
actually on the cards. There were whispers aplenty, until they petered out.
For a while at the start of 2015-16 season, Red Bull
continued to be spoken about at Elland Road. Rangnick was said to have attended
at least one game in Leeds the previous year. The club’s then manager, Uwe
Rosler, spoke about how he had been to RB Leipzig to study them before taking
the job at Elland Road but there was, ultimately, no Red Bull arrival at Leeds,
no clash of unlikely and uncomfortable bedfellows. Seven years on, the group
continues to operate without an investment in English football.
The last time Cellino mentioned Red Bull was in 2016, in an
interview with an Italian website. “I had an offer from Red Bull but I do not
want to sell,” he said. Except two days earlier, Radrizzani had been a guest of
Cellino’s during Leeds’ first game of the 2016-17 season, a 3-0 defeat away at
Queens Park Rangers.
And two days later, news broke that Radrizzani was in
discussions to acquire the club, launching a £45 million takeover that would go
through as soon as the season finished, ending Cellino’s reign. In the case of
Red Bull, it was like so much with Cellino: question everything, discount
nothing and always be ready to second-guess.