Even before it all kicked off in Berlin, RB Leipzig were already in the mood. In the dressing room at the Olympiastadion on Saturday afternoon, the coach Ralph Hasenhüttl played his squad a video compilation of their season’s highlights, “with the Champions League anthem at the end” as outro music, as the midfielder Diego Demme later told journalists.
It clearly had the desired effect. Leipzig simply overpowered the European hopefuls Hertha Berlin in a performance that was so finely honed that it was almost a caricature of their best qualities. They pressed Pal Dardai’s side like demons, then sat off to conserve energy when they needed to – whisper it, but not unlike Thomas Tuchel’s Borussia Dortmund at their best last season – and even went route one on occasions to give their befuddled opponents something else to deal with.
Hertha were in a spin and, even if Leipzig’s final two goals in this 4-1 win were scored in the dying minutes by the substitute Davie Selke, it was no more than just recompense for their total domination of Hertha, who had beaten Dortmund and come within a hair’s breadth of doing likewise to Bayern Munich already in this arena earlier in the campaign.
With the promoted side having already secured a top-four finish, this result mathematically sealed Leipzig’s ticket for the group stage of the Champions League and having arrived in the capital ready to party, with Hasenhüttl’s portable cinema and some 10,000 travelling in tow, the festive atmosphere peaked at the final whistle.
The players celebrated in a giant line in front of their supporters who had faced, as is now habitual, a raft of protest banners at the other end of the stadium – the largest of which, set against a black backdrop, put them among the “gravediggers of football” – while further south, Bayern fans did not forget to include a dig at RB among their own signs celebrating their latest title. Not that they will care much after capping an incredible campaign.
“I don’t expect to see anyone at the training ground until Wednesday morning,” the coach said after the game, and a couple of players have taken him at his word. Stefan Ilsanker, Marcel Halstenberg and Marcel Sabitzer were off on a flight to Majorca first thing on Sunday morning, according to Bild, who also reported that the star playmaker Emil Forsberg has nipped off to join some friends on a stag party in Florence.
They deserve it. Perhaps the most arresting image in the moments after the game were of Hasenhüttl and Ralf Rangnick celebrating together, and it has very much been a team effort between coach and sporting director. Having originally fulfilled a post for the whole Red Bull group, Rangnick has moved over solely to the German arm of the operation, at least partly as the paymasters put distance between Leipzig and Salzburg, with a possible clash with Uefa’s rules concerning joint-ownership of Champions League still to be fully negotiated.
On the sporting side of it, Rangnick’s presence has been vital. The way in which he has built this team – a fifth-tier one less than eight years ago, of course – has drawn heavily on his similar experiences with Hoffenheim, bringing in young players with big futures. The top-scorer Timo Werner (who scored twice here), Sabitzer, Naby Keita and Forsberg have all made vital contributions.
Marvin Compper, who could have given Forsberg a few tips for his Tuscan jaunt having played for Fiorentina for a season in 2013-14, links the two eras, having played under Rangnick at Hoffenheim, and is a rare Bundesliga veteran in this squad. “It’s a privilege to be able to compete with Europe’s best,” the 31-year-old said after Saturday’s game, “but we’ve earned the privilege.”
Next week, Leipzig face Bayern in the season’s final home game in front of a 43,000 sell-out crowd at Red Bull Arena – with no pressure to win, but just the obligation to enjoy it in front of a set of fans starved of top-level football and drinking in every moment. “It’s another absolute highlight against the best team in Germany,” Compper said. “We want to finish the season with a good home game and celebrate a huge festival.” Just as they have become accustomed to the opprobrium, it looks like the rest of Germany will have to get used to their success too.
Talking points
So hats off to Leipzig, but Freiburg deserve the same treatment after a comprehensive 2-0 win over the rampantly inconsistent Schalke on Sunday moved Christian Streich’s side into fifth spot, with Europa League qualification looking more possible than ever. “We played to the very limit of what we’re capable of,” the coach purred after the top-scorer Florian Niederlechner’s brace won the game. It is often forgotten in the wake of Leipzig’s achievement that it was actually Freiburg who won the Bundesliga 2 last season, but their rise – on a fraction of the budget – is every bit as praiseworthy.
There was a “mini-final” – as Das Aktuelle Sportstudio put it – in Nord-Rhine Westphalia as Borussia Dortmund beat Hoffenheim to leapfrog them into third spot, and the final automatic Champions League place. It was as keenly contested as one would have expected – “an emotional match” as the opening scorer Marco Reus put it – and Dortmund had their luck, with that opening goal allowed despite a clear offside. More concerning for Thomas Tuchel was the chief executive Hans-Joachim Watzke’s interview with WAZ on the eve of the game, which admitted a split between him and the coach on the rescheduling of the Champions League tie with Monaco, which was curiously timed before one of the season’s biggest games. BVB’s season could still end in glory, with the DfB Pokal final to come, but how much longer Tuchel might be around to enjoy is open to serious debate.
One man who is enjoying himself is Anthony Modeste, whose brace for Köln in the 4-3 thriller with Werder Bremen on Friday night took him to 25 goals for the season. He celebrated by dancing with the club’s goat mascot Hennes – fortunately rather more carefully than the club’s erstwhile centre-forward Anthony Ujah. It all meant that Peter Stöger’s side stole a march on the visitors for a Europa League place in what has become a thrilling joust between a quintet of teams.
Bayern returned home after clinching the title last week, and squeezed past Darmstadt thanks to a classy Juan Bernat goal, which relegated Torsten Frings’s valiant visitors. The third-choice goalkeeper Tom Starke, who is due to retire at the end of the season, “won the game for us today” in the words of Carlo Ancelotti, saving a late penalty from Bayern alumnus Hamit Altintop. Starke stepped up after Sven Ulreich was injured in Friday’s training, and shone to the extent that Ancelotti’s assistant Hermann Gerland felt compelled to dive into a live TV interview after the game and apply some hairspray to the goalkeeper as he was questioned.
Hamburg and Mainz drew 0-0 in the weekend’s big battle at the bottom, but the never-relegated northerners – and current occupants of the relegation playoff spot – were really lucky to hang on to a point in a game in which they were saved more than once by their excellent goalkeeper Christian Mathenia. “These are games that have relatively little to do with football,” the coach Markus Gisdol told Sky after the match, and the same is likely to be the case for the final two games of the season; next week’s trip to Schalke and the final match against Wolfsburg at Volkspark.
After a first half which the coach Andries Jonker admitted “wasn’t Bundesliga football”, two sublime second-half goals by Daniel Didavi and Mario Gómez earned the struggling Wolfsburg a vital win at Eintracht Frankfurt. Gómez, Die Wölfe’s captain for the day after Luiz Gustavo’s meltdown last week, set up the opener for Didavi and, after his own strike, has now scored 15 this season. Gustavo, remarkably, was suspended for only one game after his reaction to a red card against Bayern last week and so is available for the home game with Gladbach on Saturday.
Just above them on Saturday, Augsburg had looked set for a vital win at Borussia Mönchengladbach via Alfred Finnbogason’s goal until – almost inevitably – their former player André Hahn slid in a back-post equaliser in the fourth minute of stoppage time to break their hearts. Although they have two points more than Hamburg and Mainz, they receive Dortmund next week before making the short trip to Hoffenheim on the final day.
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