Mario Gomez: ‘People criticise Red Bull but sport is about evolution’ — The Athletic 23/8/24
By Adam Crafton
Mario Gomez is discussing the title race in the German
Bundesliga, considering whether last season’s shock win by Bayer Leverkusen
should provide inspiration to Bayern Munich’s rivals.
Gomez, a former Germany international striker who won the
Bundesliga three times — twice with Bayern and once with Stuttgart — is now the
technical director of Red Bull Soccer, the group that controls RB Leipzig
(Germany), Red Bull Salzburg (Austria), New York Red Bulls (United States), Red
Bull Bragantino and Red Bull Brasil (both Brazil). Red Bull has also recently
taken a minority stake in Championship side Leeds United, becoming the club’s
shirt sponsor and, Gomez says, sharing information and knowledge about how to
develop the club.
In Germany, where Gomez is based, Bayern Munich had won 11
consecutive Bundesliga titles until Xabi Alonso’s Leverkusen disrupted matters
so dramatically last season, finishing 18 points clear of Bayern, who slumped
to third, a point even behind Stuttgart. Leipzig came fourth.
The previous year, Bayern required goal difference to win
the title ahead of Borussia Dortmund. So, are we entering a new era of genuine
competition in the Bundesliga?
“Bayern is playing in a different league financially,” Gomez
warns. “The size of the club and the players they can get are on another level.
We’re not going into the season and telling everybody, ‘OK, now we are going to
become Deutscher Meister (champions)’, because that’s not very realistic.
That’s something we are dreaming about.
“But Leverkusen showed if you are very consistent, if you
win all the so-called small games, if you have a clear plan, then it is
possible. The gap was getting smaller the last few years. If you win the
Bundesliga every year, you’re probably not focused that much anymore. Probably,
their (Bayern’s) focus in the last three or four years was more on winning the
Champions League and then they lost points in the Bundesliga. So if they are
focusing again on the Champions League, we have to be there.”
Gomez’s assessment of the financial challenge is astute as
Bayern are operating in a different commercial stratosphere from their rivals.
For the 2022-23 season, Bayern recorded total revenues of €812.3million
(£689.7m; $904.6m) while Dortmund reported €498m, Leipzig €396.2m and
Leverkusen €327.3m. Leipzig have benefited from their own cash injections,
founded in 2009 as the German arm of the Red Bull sports empire, and
subsequently rising through the German divisions and into the upper reaches of
the Bundesliga.
They have received admiring glances from rival clubs, most
notably curious about their multi-club model, especially in scouting,
development, recruitment and player sales. Yet, at the same time, there are
also plenty of people within Germany who resent the perceived artificiality of
the club, where the shirt and stadium is sponsored by Red Bull, and where it
contrasts to the centuries-old clubs where fandom has been passed down
generations.
Leipzig have also won two of the past three DFB-Pokal
(German Cup) trophies, cementing their status as dining at the top table of
German football. This summer, they embarked on a pre-season tour in the U.S.,
playing Aston Villa in New York and Wolverhampton Wanderers in Fort Lauderdale.
The need for growth within German football is significant —
as an example, the Bundesliga’s U.S. television deal with ESPN is worth around
$30million per year, compared to the Premier League’s $450million per year with
NBC.
Gomez says: “We are a very young club with huge potential
and we already had huge success in this time. We have to help the Bundesliga
get more recognition and more fans all over the world like the Premier League
has.
“Many people (internationally) love to watch Bayern but the
rest of the Bundesliga? So far, not that much. We want people in Asia or in the
U.S. to watch the Bundesliga, not just Bayern Munich.”
Yet despite that growth, Leipzig are still a club that
remains short of the top tier of European football. Since 2019, the club has
sold eight players for €40m or more to Liverpool (Naby Keita, Dominik Szoboslai
and Ibrahima Konate), Chelsea (Christopher Nkunku and Timo Werner), Bayern
Munich (Dayot Upamecano) and Barcelona (Dani Olmo to Barcelona).
It begs the question of whether the aim for Leipzig is to
develop players for resale or if the eventual objective is to hold a leading
squad together to consistently challenge for the Bundesliga and Champions
League.
“The original aim was to be successful,” Gomez says. “But
you have to establish a club in the Bundesliga and then try to be top-four and
then top-two, and then one day hopefully top. We have won the cup twice. It
makes us hungry for more.”
At the same time, there is trust in Red Bull’s model, that
selling at the right price can lead to positive reinvestment and growth. It
also forms part of Leipzig’s ability to buy players in the first place, as
talented assets knows they will not be deprived of an opportunity at the very
top.
“If we lose good players, we will have good players next
year,” says Gomez. “That’s what we believe. As a player, I had the dream to
make the next step, at least until I was at one of the top clubs in Bayern.
Then you realise, ‘OK, here I’m able to win the Champions League’. The players
have to dream. If a player is good enough to be in one of those teams and we
agree with them on a deal, that’s quite normal.
“We are not buying players to tell them, ‘OK, we develop you
for two years and then you go to a top club’. We are buying players to tell
them, ‘We want to be successful with you and if we are successful, you will
take the next step anyway’.
“We didn’t agree on all the deals but we could have sold
already to all of the top teams in Europe. That’s not why we are doing this. We
try to be successful but we also respect the financial rules, so we’re not
doing crazy things. Probably, one day, we will have enough tradition and
achievement that players will think, ‘Oh, it’s my dream to play for Leipzig’ —
it can be like that 20 years from now.”
One of the specialities of the Red Bull group has been
identifying players at a young age, developing them within the group, sometimes
at multiple Red Bull teams, before selling them on. USMNT midfielder Tyler
Adams played for New York Red Bulls and Leipzig before moving to Leeds United.
Upamecano spent a season in Salzburg’s first team as a teenager before four
years in Leipzig, after which he was sold to Bayern. Erling Haaland signed for
Salzburg at 18 but exited the group within a year to join Borussia Dortmund.
In recent years, however, the competition for the finest
young talent has intensified, with clubs including Chelsea, Real Madrid and the
City Football Group (which encompasses Manchester City) increasingly acquiring
younger players.
“On paper, we are a top-10 club in Europe,” Gomez says.
“That’s the UEFA ranking (Leipzig have slipped from ninth to 13th in this
season’s coefficient table) — but the top eight clubs, they are on a different
level, so if Manchester City is really going for a player, they will get him
before us.
“But behind those seven or eight clubs, there are probably
eight to 10 clubs on our level who are competing with us for the biggest
talents. The market for younger talents is getting hotter and hotter because
clubs have realised that if the guy is already 21 or 22, then the price is much
higher, so they try to get the 16- or 17-year-old. The age is getting younger
and younger.”
Is that healthy?
“We see many great players playing fantastically at 18 or
19. Is it healthy how much we pay for them? That’s the market. If there was no
market, the price would be lower. In our case, we have to be very good at
scouting and recruitment.”
This summer, there was a boost when Benjamin Sesko, the
21-year-old Slovenian forward, spurned interest from clubs including Arsenal
and Chelsea to extend his contract at Leipzig until 2029.
Gomez says: “It is the next step on our journey that we can
do this. Probably we couldn’t three years ago. This was not about money. Sesko
believes in how we take care of him. He believes the coach helps him get ready
for a top club. He has no rush because his talent, behaviour and ambition are
unbelievable. There is no way to stop him. He’s smart enough to understand, ‘OK
one year, two year, three years more here, it helps me to be ready’.”
Gomez’s role as technical director is to act as a bridge
between football and commercial operations, while also working across the teams
in the Red Bull group.
“I had the luck to be a striker for 20 years,” he smiles,
“so I got a lot of sunshine and applause. Now I really enjoy helping our
responsible people to shine in the front row.”
That means working out development paths for players such as
New York Red Bull’s forward Julian Hall, who last September became, at 15 years
and 190 days, the second-youngest player to debut in an MLS match. Philadelphia
Union’s Cavan Sullivan has since overtaken Hall and Freddie Adu as the MLS’
youngest debutant when he appeared aged 14 and 306 days old in July.
Gomez says: “We should not overload Julian with pressure.
He’s a great guy, working very hard. He has huge talent and is so smart. What I
really love to see in training is how he finishes. He’s not a typical
16-year-old just kicking the ball because he’s in front of the goal but he’s
still 16, and we really believe in the guy. It’s up to him how far he will go.”
Last season, there were rumours of interest from Chelsea.
Has Gomez encountered broad interest from outside the Red Bull group?
“Yes,” says Gomez, “and we will have this even more in the
next couple of years but he trusts us. He understands we really take care of
him — not just because we want to keep him but because we really identify with
his huge potential. But telling a 16-year-old guy every day that he has huge
potential probably doesn’t help, especially if you are in the U.S., because he
also realises that not many players get that.
“If he’s doing great here, we will have several options for
him to make his dream come true. We’re just at the beginning of a nice
adventure.”
Gomez has also been on calls and in meetings at Leeds, where
Red Bull acquired an unspecified minority stake this year. Leeds are controlled
by 49ers Enterprises, the private equity arm of the San Francisco 49ers NFL
franchise, which arrived at Elland Road as a minority shareholder in 2018
before purchasing 100 per cent control from Andrea Radrizzani last summer.
What does the relationship involve?
“We have an exchange with them about how we became a big
multi-club and brought small clubs to a good position at the top of leagues,”
Gomez explains. “We are super excited about having the sponsorship but they are
doing their stuff by themselves, and we are sharing knowledge.
“We are not telling them what to do. We are explaining how
we grew over the last 10 years. They are interested in how we managed this.
It’s not a secret. It’s not rocket science what we are doing. It’s just taking
care, being resilient, being brave in our identity and philosophy. That’s a
discussion we’re having with them. I was telling the guys, it’s super important
to have a clear identity.”
As for those who are not convinced by the Red Bull model,
does Gomez sense any softening of attitudes?
“That’s the beautiful thing in football, you don’t have to
have the same opinion,” he smiles. “There will be people who don’t like it but
I give an example: in Germany, we had many kids wearing a PSG shirt with Lionel
Messi, Neymar or Kylian Mbappe. Probably half of them didn’t know what PSG is
but they knew the players, so that’s what changed in football. Kids are
following individuals.
“When I was young I had my team and if my favourite player
left, I chose another player. Nowadays, kids are following the players. They
were fans of PSG because Mbappe is there but now they are Real Madrid fans.
That’s the reality, so I don’t care if there’s a 70-year-old guy or a
40-year-old guy complaining about this because I’m living in reality.