RB Salzburg, while not currently the most famous club in the Red Bull “family,” was instrumental in shaping the corporation’s soccer philosophy, which is now so famous in Europe. It was in Salzburg that RB’s first club was founded, and it was also there that Dietrich Mateschitz learned how not to build a team. In Red Bull’s first three years, Salzburg won only one championship, and got historically trashed at home against Rapid in 2008 (0:7). Currently, Salzburg has 14 championships to its credit, 10 of which it has won during 10 consecutive years. However, since last season, something began to fall apart in the Mozartstadt. Currently, Pep Lijnders’ team has scored just 18 points in 10 league games. Is the time of dominance of the “canning giant” ending?
The genesis of the problem
July/August 2023 — this is, in my opinion, the period that is crucial to understanding why Salzburg is currently in the situation it is in. This time saw two departures — Christoph Freund, after 17 years at the club (and, most importantly, as sports director since 2015) moved to Bayern Munich, and Matthias Jaissle, the manager with the second-longest tenure at Salzburg in the 21st century, was chased in disgrace (there’s no gentler way to put it) to Saudi Arabia, where he took over Al-Ahli. They both had a big part in Salzburg’s golden era in 2021–23: Jaissle is responsible for two confidently won championships, promotion to the group stage of the Champions League, entry into the knockout stage of the LM (for the first time!) and the Austrian Cup (in 21/22 — the last one won by the club so far), while Freund is responsible for building the squad and bringing in such players as Strahinja Pavlovic, Karim Konate, Benjamin Sesko, and Oscar Gloukh (and that’s just a drop in the ocean of all transfers).
Losing two such important figures practically simultaneously would be a major blow to any club. It was to be different with Salzburg — the squad was teeming with talented as well as experienced players, and the new coach, although found in a panic and out of necessity, met the requirements: Gerhard Struber is an alumnus of the Red Bull school, having previously coached FC Liefering, Salzburg’s youth team, as well as New York Red Bull. Bernhard Seonbuchner, who replaced Freund as sports director, spent his entire career in Salzburg, and before that worked for a year as FC Liefering’s sports manager. He still had it easier, as this most important summer window was still conducted by Freund. Verification — both on and off the field — came in a flash.
This is what Alex Nikel of victauri.at, (on Twitter @FcsAlex) says about the departure of Freund and Jaissle: Freund’s departure was definitely a bigger loss.. He is the key factor of the development and the success in the last years. Without him Salzburg wouldn‘t be the club it is now and wouldn‘t have this international reputation. Jaissle wasn‘t that convincing as a coach as hoped. When he left the club that was not seen as a hug. But the team played much better with him than with Struber and Lijnders now. Did Freund’s departure start Salzburg’s current crisis? Yes.
2023/24 season
A season that ended with Red Bull losing its long-standing dominance. There wasn’t that much going on in the cabinets during this time (aside from coaching changes) — four important players left — Benjamin Sesko, Philipp Kohn, Noah Okafor, and Nicolas Seiwald — but they were replaced quite smoothly by transfers (Petar Ratkov, Mads Bidstrup, Alex Schlager) and promotions from Liefering (Karim Konate, Nene Dorgeles). Gerhard Struber was given a strong team, theoretically capable of repeating the result of previous years, even because he took over two games in the season. So how did the loss of the championship to Sturm Graz come about?
A big part of it was, unsurprisingly, Christian Ilzer’s team. An average of more than two points per game has been achieved in recent years only by Red Bull — even in the currently discussed, weaker season they scored a total of 64 points. Sturm had to climb to the heights to threaten this poor Salzburg. It should be noted, however, that the poor form of the current serial champion did not come from nowhere. Gerhard Struber, whose hiring was quite heavily criticized by fans of Salzburg and his previous club, the New York Red Bulls, completely failed to cope with a rather simple (as it seemed) task. He got off to a great start — his first seven games (six in the Bundesliga, one in the LM) were six wins and an away draw with Sturm Graz. However, the enthusiasm quickly subsided, and Struber’s problems came to the surface. While the defense held up relatively well (albeit only in the league), his team lacked the style and identity strongly associated with the Red Bull brand. Salzburg scored a lot and didn’t lose all that much, but watching its matches was often tiresome. Tactically, there was chaos on the pitch, goals for the sake of victory were scored more due to an advantage in the individual quality of the players than from any greater tactical thought. This was also well demonstrated in the Champions League, where, when it came to facing serious rivals, Salzburg recorded a score of 1–1–4 and finished last in the group by having fewer goals scored than Benfica. Slipping through the matches had to end at some point, and it ended at a critical moment — after splitting the points, in the Champions Group. Struber’s team won two games (including a crucial one against Sturm), then tied with Rapid and lost to LASK (meanwhile falling in the Austrian Cup semifinals), causing Sturm to level the table for the first time in five months. Salzburg’s board of directors decided that Struber was unable to wring anything more out of the players and had to say goodbye to him in the hope of saving the season. The effect of the new coach, however, was not there, and Onur Cinel, who temporarily replaced Struber, although he did very well in Liefering, ended the season with a balance of 3–1–2 (including two wins at a time when they could only dream of catching up with Sturm).
2024/25 season
With Seonbuchner’s first summer window and a new hope and potential coaching star in the form of Pep Lijnders, Jurgen Klopp’s longtime assistant at Liverpool—Salzburg wanted to enter the new season strong so that the recent loss of the championship to Sturm Graz would quickly become just an unpleasant memory. And although I’m writing this text at the stage of barely more than 1/3 of the league season, it’s safe to assume that Salzburg’s crisis hasn’t stopped, perhaps even worsened, and doesn’t look likely to change soon. What went wrong?
This season’s summer transfer window is a big test for Bernhard Seonbuchner. No one expects him to be a second Freund right away, but it would be useful to at least not mess anything up. For now, it seems that even such a low-hanging bar the 41-year-old has failed to reach. This is how Alex Nikel describes the situation: His [Seonbuchner] first windows went really bad. Salzburg didn‘t win any titles last summer, the best players left the club (Solet, Pavlovic, Sucic…) for little money. Solet was one of the best invests in the last years and his contract was terminated. So the squad is much worse than last season but he didn‘t really bring in new players. Instead of that he kept players that weren‘t really convincing until now (Piatkowski, Nene…). That was very suprising for the fans.
Among the names of players who left, it is still worth mentioning striker Sekou Koita — although injury-prone and healing practically as much as he played, he was a very effective joker in the last two seasons — 14 goals and 6 assists in less than 1,800 minutes (per transfermarkt).
So key central defenders and a midfielder are gone, as is a useful substitute. In Salzburg, an important element is Liefering’s most talented players, who are first part of the first team, get minutes from the bench, to take over the first-team reins the following season from their teammates who left. Adam Daghim (striker/right winger), Moussa Yeo (striker/left winger), and John Mellberg (center-back/left defender) were promoted this season.
Who, on the other hand, came in? The matchday squad for the first league match included only one new acquisition — goalkeeper Janis Blaswich. The absence of Takumu Kawamura, who was brought in at the beginning of July, was due to the Japanese player’s injury, which does not change the fact that further transfers were made only in late August and early September, in addition, either for positions that did not need strengthening (midfielders Bajcetić and Clark) or players were brought in who were not ready to immediately strengthen the first team (Edmund Baidoo and Joane Gadou).
So you can see that the imbalance in the team is considerable, although Lijnders tried not to complain about it. He seems to have done so only once — after the blunder against Sturm Graz (0:5, the highest defeat against this rival ever) he confessed that due to the lack of alternatives in the midfield position, Kamil Piatkowski had to play several games with noticeable pain. The Pole was rested in two league games: in the aforementioned match against Sturm Graz (score 0:2 when he entered) and against the relegated Grazer AK (score 0:0, his substitute, Joane Gadou, saw a red card after only 43′ minutes).
Non-field matters, however, are not only transfers and team building but also the coach’s management of the squad. Here it is necessary to point out some questionable decisions made by Lijnders during his (now) short adventure with Salzburg:
- Entrusting the captain’s armband to Janis Blaswisch, RB Leipzig’s reserve goalkeeper, who had only just come to the club (!) on a one-year loan (!!) and who was only supposed to play de facto for 2–3 months, until Alex Schlager recovered.
- Persistently betting on Blaswich even though Schlager was already ready to play, while he played poorly and contributed nothing extra to the team.
- Entrusting a place on the team’s board to Bryan Okoh, a 21-year-old after several serious injuries, then… welding him to the bench, which turned into another return to Liefering.
- He went into the opening Champions League match against Sparta Prague with two rookies in the form of Bobby Clark and Stefan Bajceticia — both of whom arrived in Salzburg from Liverpool in late August and trained very briefly with the team. The decision was reportedly perceived in the locker room as favoritism toward their former charges.
- Constant rotations in the lineup, usually unforced by injuries: mixing up in the middle of midfield, rotating the striker position in Konate’s absence, or throwing Dedic on either side of the defense. Outside of the center of defense (Piatkowski appeared in 21/21 possible games, Baidoo in 17), no formation had time to come together to form the necessary schemes and automatism.
Pep Lijnders did not find fantastic conditions in Salzburg (compared to other seasons, however, not to the rest of the league), but as you can see he is not without fault. My words are confirmed by Alex: For me one of the biggest reasons [of the current crisis] is the squad, like I have already said before. The squad is weaker than last season and there are no really good and new talents. The work of Lijnders is hard to evaluate for me. But he also did some mistakes (line up against Sparta).
It is already known how it looked in the offices. Despite these omissions, there would have been no question of a crisis if Salzburg had delivered with style and results. The beginning of the season made it possible to believe that this would be the case, as in the first five games (a cup game, three league games, and a match in the 3rd round of the LM qualifiers) Pep Lijnders’ charges won four times and tied once. Among the positives, however, a big problem immediately stood out, because even though they scored as many as 18 goals, they also lost seven, keeping only one clean sheet. That doesn’t seem like much, but by comparison, After the same number of games in the 2023/24 season they lost one goal, and in the 2022/23 and 2021/22 seasons they lost three. The farther into the woods, the worse it gets — currently, after 11 league games (as of 20/11) Salzburg has 18 points (the fewest since the 2010/11 season) Even if the Austrian vice-champion would have won their two overdue games, they would barely catch the podium.
The defensive problems, as Luis Kircher points out in his analysis, are mainly due to the drastic change in style imposed by Lijnders. The Dutchman planned to introduce the aggressive and intense gegenpressing familiar from Jürgen Klopp’s Liverpool. Unfortunately, the transformation has not gone as smoothly as expected. Salzburg has a problem with pressing, a key element. It’s not intense enough, and on top of that, the players often apply it individually instead of in a coordinated way with a larger group, which creates holes in the formation that opponents easily exploit. In addition, the pair of central defenders in the form of Kamil Piatkowski and Samson Baidoo are not among the fastest, which, with such a high defensive line, makes it easy for fast attackers to take advantage of the free space behind them. A good example is Isak Jansson’s goal in Salzburg’s match against Rapid (2:3, from the 14th second), where the Swede even ridiculed Piątkowski.
Also, the offensive, initially working fantastically, soon began to stutter. Salzburg currently has 15 goals scored in the league (just 5th-6th in the Bundesliga, counting overdue games) and a series of three games in a row without scoring a goal (the first time since the 2010/11 season). There is also drama in the Champions League league phase — they have hit the net only three times in four games, all in the match against Feyenoord (3:1). Initially, Salzburg relied on individual breakaways and the feats of Oscar Gloukh, Moussa Yeo and Nene Dorgeles. Any offensive schemes were fairly easy to read — just run a lot, close down the side zones so that neither side defenders nor wingers can calmly pass to players running into the penalty area, and play a low defensive block. That much is enough for Salzburg to bang its head against the wall. This was perfectly demonstrated by BW Linz, who won against Lijnders’ team 2:0. This is how the statistics of this match looked like:
What does the future hold for Salzburg?
Pep Lijnders is treading on thin ice at the moment. He’s probably not Salzburg’s biggest problem, but there’s more to come out of the situation and the staff, especially in the league. Although Sturm and Rapid are in great shape, the Red Bull club is still worth almost 50% of the entire league, has the most expensive players, spends, and earns sums that the rest of the teams don’t even dream of. Nevertheless, without a suitable replacement (and there is no such thing on the horizon), a change of coach will at best not improve anything long-term, and may even make things worse. The problems are deeper, as Alex says: There were made a lot of mistakes in the past. The club didn‘t work good in the last years. Thats now the result (poor transfers, no talents for Liefering and the academy). There are no really good playmakers in the first team squad. In the youth there no good own technical good talents.
The Decline — What’s happening to RB Salzburg?