Paraag Marathe reveals unique advantage Leeds United have over Championship rivals in summer transfer window — YEP 7/6/24
By Joe Donnohue
Leeds United could lean on the club's new-found partnership
with soft-drink giant Red Bull when identifying and scouting players for Daniel
Farke's squad this summer, says chairman Paraag Marathe.
Red Bull's sporting footprint extends across continents with
football clubs in Brazil, Ghana, the United States, Austria and Germany. Most
English football fans are familiar with the latter pair - FC Red Bull Salzburg
and RB Leipzig - given their recent forays in European club competitions.
Both sides have a track record of identifying and signing
promising young talent, perhaps underappreciated across the wider market,
before selling at a considerable profit; Salzburg in particular have sold
several of their burgeoning young stars to the Bundesliga outfit based in East
Germany.
How Red Bull's investment in Leeds measures up to their
hands-on role in Leipzig and Salzburg is, however, lesser by a considerable
extent. The company do not have a say in key decisions regarding player
signings and the general day-to-day running of the club despite their minority
shareholding position. Those responsibilities remain under the remit of
chairman Marathe, his 49ers Enterprises management structure and existing Leeds
board.
That said, the 49ers chief has admitted in an interview with
The Athletic that Leeds will seek to utilise their strategic partnership with
the Red Bull empire to enhance their recruitment this summer.
"If there’s an opportunity somewhere, or we identify a
talent that might benefit us, we’ll go do that," Marathe said.
"The other benefit of this is that, as minority
investors in the club, they’re another set of eyes and ears — pretty darn keen
and expert eyes and ears, in seeing other players in other leagues.
"Forget even about Red Bull players. They have extra
eyeballs on a lot of players. As we evaluate and do the work for this window
and future windows, we can say, ‘What do you think of this player?’.
"There’s things we can learn which we otherwise
wouldn’t have been able to learn."
Red Bull Salzburg have in the past been able to lure
little-known Erling Haaland from Norwegian club Molde and Sadio Mane from
French club FC Metz, both at the beginning of their careers, whilst bankrolling
RB Leipzig to within touching distance of a first German league title,
admittedly attracting strongly dissenting voices from football supporters
across the country.
The Red Bull scouting network has produced hit after hit and
Leeds now have a back-door into their recruitment mainframe, which will
theoretically increase the number of players the club's scouting department can
watch, read trusted appraisals on and gain access to.
How the link between Leipzig, Salzburg and Leeds works in
practice remains to be seen however a return to the Premier League could
feasibly see United positioned at the tip of Red Bull's footballing pyramid,
whereby players are funneled to the top.
Naturally, given Red Bull's influence on the other clubs
they own a chunk of and the fact all but one - due to German advertising rules
- bear their name, this access to a recruitment treasure trove may ultimately
come at a cost. But, for the time being, Marathe has reassured devout Leeds
disciples that 105 years of history is not about to be canned or sold off.