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Borussia Dortmund Fans Fighting Unwinnable War with Boycott of RB Leipzig
- Updated: September 9, 2016
Borussia Dortmund face RB Leipzig in their first away game of the 2016/17 Bundesliga campaign on Saturday following an oddly placed international break after an opening-day 2-1 win over Mainz 05.
The scheduling mirrors that of last season, when the Black and Yellows played FC Ingolstadt on Matchday 2: It’s the first Bundesliga home match in their opponents’ history after making the jump to the German top flight.
The Ruhr side will hope history repeats itself and perhaps seeing Ralph Hasenhuttl on the touchline can serve as a good omen, seeing as the Austrian coach moved from Ingolstadt to Leipzig in the summer. However, it’s highly unlikely that Dortmund will come away with an easy 4-0 win on Saturday.
That was the result when they played Ingolstadt last season, but the similarities between the two promoted sides are few and far between. Indeed, Leipzig are far from a normal promoted side.
Even though Ingolstadt are backed by a huge company themselves—local car manufacturer Audi holds a 20 percent stake, per Uli Hesse of ESPN FC—the Bavarians’ financial firepower bears no relation to the firepower Leipzig boast thanks to their affiliation with Red Bull.
Whereas the Schanzer, as fans call Ingolstadt, invested only €3.7 million to supplement the team that won promotion in 2015, per Transfermarkt, Leipzig paid a total of €50 million in transfer fees this summer without winning a single cent from any outgoings.
Only Dortmund and perennial champions Bayern Munich shelled out more money in the recent transfer window, but both of the Bundesliga’s premier sides received massive fees for players they sold in return.
Their negative balance of €50 million puts the eastern Germans 10th in the world, per Transfermarkt, with only five clubs from the Premier League totalling a higher net spend over the summer despite the inflation of the English transfer market.
Leipzig’s unprecedented rise to the top flight—the club has only existed since 2009, when Red Bull acquired the license of then-fifth division side SSV Markranstadt—has naturally not come without a massive backlash from fans all over the country.
“The nouveau riche club epitomises everything traditional German football fans resent,” Stefan Buczko wrote for ESPN FC. Protest against the “plastic club,” as those fans have branded Leipzig, has come in many forms, as Rory Smith pointed out for the New York Times:
At Hansa Rostock, supporters refused to enter the stadium for …
