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.