Red Bullish
High Protein Beef Paste Issue 2
A few days before this new issue, football lost another icon. This week’s quote is about Pelé, but with enormous sadness I’d like to begin with a tribute to Gianluca Vialli, who died last week at 58.
I’m one of those Brits who loves nothing more than to bore people to tears about how I became obsessed with Italian football in the early 1990s thanks to coverage on Channel 4. At around the same time as going to my first matches, as discovering international football, as growing into a weird football-addicted little boy, Serie A became my calcio bread and butter.
To me, at that time and that age, nobody in that league was bigger than Vialli. Not Paul Gascoigne, who’s responsible for Channel 4 being there in the first place. Not Beppe Signori or Gabriel Batistuta who followed in his footsteps as Capocannoniere winners. Not Franco Baresi, who made it his business to stop them, nor Paolo Maldini, whom I love dearly. Nobody.
Vialli was one of a kind. There aren’t many players whose mere mention can conjure up a specific image more than three decades later. Vialli’s does that for me. He’s another profound loss for football.
For a proper obituary I can recommend Nicky Bandini’s piece on the day of Vialli’s passing.
Let’s get down to business.
Red Bullshit?
Several years ago my football club – the Premier League one I love by inheritance, not the non-league one to which I’m committed by choice – found itself in the reluctant iron grip of an absentee owner.
He was the classic owner of the time: an American billionaire with an NFL franchise and the whiff of suspicion that he might lose interest at any moment.
The difference was that this guy actually did. Increased competition pushed his vanity goals further from his reach and an acrimonious divorce left him ill-equipped financially for the challenge.
He slunk off into the shadows (or back into them, if the tales of what caused the aforementioned split are to be believed), destined only to return in the form of bizarre statements and, indirectly, behind-the-scenes rattlings of the kind of behaviour that would make that salt beef guy embarrassed.
In the years of his ownership twilight the supporters became desperate for a takeover. We were wary of the risks but increasingly willing to embrace them. Some of us even entertained the idea of the club being owned by Red Bull.
The energy drink slingers were said to be interested in a Premier League team at the time, though they never did quite make their way into English football outside Jamie Vardy’s kit bag. It always surprised me that any fellow supporters were open to it.
Red Bull is reviled for its involvement in football. In Germany, where RB Leipzig won their first trophy in 2022, rival supporters make no secret of their opposition to Leipzig’s ownership model and modus operandi. In Austria, Red Bull Salzburg’s domestic dominance since 2005 after three titles in the 1990s and none in the six previous decades serves to highlight the potency of both the Red Bull way and the stench that comes with it.
FC Liefering are their Red Bull-owned feeder and farm club in Austria. Red Bull Bragantino and Red Bull Brasil have a similar relationship in South America. New York Red Bulls compete in Major League Soccer and New York Red Bulls II in the USL Championship.
All of which is to say that Red Bull is running a global football network and doing it well by any measure outwith sentiment. The synergy of philosophy, football operations, coaching and resources makes perfect sense. Players move between clubs – or, rather, players are moved between clubs – and that’s where the energy really is different.
Red Bull is a football talent factory. Love it or hate it, they are objectively excellent at producing footballers. Their youth scouting is outstanding and they bring young players in from all over the world. They turn out a veritable production line of technically able, tactically effective footballers. There will be more.
Therein lies the friction. All of this is to the betterment of the careers of these players, yet Red Bull’s skinning of the clubs in the name of branding and content, which is why they’re there in the first place, is as unpopular among rival supporters as their undeniable competitive edge.
I have a strange relationship with Red Bull. It’s a coin with two faces because that’s how coins work.
Heads, I’m a traditionalist.
I started going to football in England in the early 1990s and things were different then, to put it mildly. I love the game as much today but a good deal of my thinking was established in those years, formative not only for me but for modern football.
Competition matters. Governing bodies should be egalitarian in nature and their playing fields level. Heritage matters. In football, as in life, it’s the little things that truly enrich us – the things only match-goers appreciate, or that make no sense today other than just because.
In the words of the legendary heavy metal band Slipknot, “old does not mean dead, new does not mean best”. Branded football teams and interconnected set-ups aren’t new, of course, but Red Bull and indeed City Football Group have upped the ante and I don’t like it one bit.
Tails, I’m an analyst.
Throughout the years I’ve been part of the team working on HUNDRED and its more famous predecessor, I’ve picked up most if not all of the players under the Red Bull umbrella.
I followed Dayot Upamecano, Duje Ćaleta-Car and Martin Hinteregger. I was wowed by Naby Keïta and Takumi Minamino. My 2022 was spent observing and evaluating 25 players; another eight started the year with either Salzburg or Leipzig. Some have already moved on to bigger things. Others will undoubtedly achieve bigger still. Most of them are excellent yet again. It’s easy to admire it when it’s in your face like that.
Public discourse as we shift into 2023 is a swamp. In football, positions are entrenched and debate is stagnant, nuance and compromise consigned to history by the creeping poison of “banter” and Football Twitter.
When it comes to Red Bull I might be two opposing parts of the same problem, because I’m certainly not the solution. I’m no magnanimous apologist. I don’t have a mushy, middle-of-the-road opinion so vanilla it’s barely an opinion at all. I simply hold two contradictory views of equal strength.
Even at a low ebb for my club I wouldn’t have been in favour of selling its name, colours, stadium and heritage down a carbonated river of taurine and sucrose – not for all the money in the world, nor for a player development system that’s right up there with the best in the world.
Red Bull is bad for football. That much is clear. Maybe Red Bull is good for football too.
“Pelé was the first Brazilian footballer whose cultural impact exceeded the game, and football’s first global celebrity.”
David Goldblatt summarises the incredible reach of Pelé, who passed away in December. My generation is old enough to have seen Diego Maradona in action but Pelé was long retired by then, enjoying the sort of otherworldly affection that comes to icons who became icons before the ubiquitous access to sport we have today. That’s the essence of immortality.
Salty beef extracts
Pele: Goalscorer, World Cup winner, hero, icon and legend (BBC Sport)
It’s always sunny in Wrexham, where Hollywood takeover has breathed new life into a community (i)
Chesterfield's Jesurun Uchegbulam on life at AC Milan and heart surgery (BBC Sport)
Everton problems do not end with Frank Lampard but they definitely include him (Football365)
Gio Reyna’s parents flagged Gregg Berhalter’s domestic dispute to US Soccer (The Guardian)
⚡ Necaxa's Heriberto Jurado eyeing Rayos stardom, jump to Europe as Clausura begins (Getting CONCACAFed)
Crypto chaos: how Crawley crumbled under owners’ reckless leadership (The Guardian)
Goal of the Week
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