Bundesliga pacesetters RB Leipzig finding life tough at the top

Nagelsmann's side have stalled badly after flying start to season while big boys Bayern and Dortmund are finding their momentum

RB Leipzig players Angelino, left, and Dani Olmo after their German Cup defeat to Eintracht Frankfurt on Tuesday. Getty

Anybody seeking advice on the virtues of a winter break, the energy-saving device perfected in Germany and now fashionable even in the English Premier League, probably ought not to ask RB Leipzig.

Whatever they did at rest during January seems to have made them forgetful. The most unexpected pacesetters in European football at the end of 2019 have lost momentum in 2020.

Leipzig go to Bayern Munich on Sunday in a state of siege, without a win in three games. At this most corporate of clubs – backed by the soft drink company Red Bull and pushed to top-flight status by that backing – a corporate line is being taken about the possible consequences of defeat to Bayern, who ousted the upstarts from top spot last weekend.

“This is not a final,” said sports director Marcus Krosche, and left the ironic messaging to the manager, Julain Nagelsmann. “This is the most all-important fixture of the whole year,” Nagelsmann told reporters, “but only if you are in media-land.”

The gap between Leipzig – who a decade ago were winning the southern section of Germany’s Oberliga, the fifth tier of the hierarchy – and serial champions Bayern is a mere point, but such is the modern reputation of Germany’s mightiest club for ruthlessly stalking and overtaking pretenders to their title that Nagelsmann knows full well what the narrative will be.

German football may be enjoying its most compelling and layered title-race for over a decade – the top four are separated by three points – but the eye is drawn to the ominous form of the title-holders. Bayern have won their last six league matches; the next best run is Borussia Dortmund winning their last three.

Leipzig, who had the honour of being so-called ‘winter champions’ at the halfway stage of the season, have taken four points from their three league matches since the mid-term break, and lost to Eintracht Frankfurt in the German Cup midweek.

Amid one or two symptoms of fatigue, the most obvious shortcoming is in front of goal. Leipzig ended 2019 as the division’s spectacular goalscorers: through all November and December they never scored fewer than three times in a game.

Union Berlin suffered some of the same when the season resumed but since then, it is as if a brutal new-year diet has been imposed. “Sometimes, we’re missing the last piece of the jigsaw,” said striker Yussuf Poulsen of the sudden barrenness on opposition penalty areas. “But we’ll find it again.”

The obvious diagnosis is that Leipzig are suffering vertigo. The club were unused to “being top and chased” as top scorer Timo Werner put it, and a young club are managed by an exceptionally young head coach, the 32-year-old Nagelsmann, who identified signs of complacency in practice last month.

“It is not easy to show commitment in a match when you have not worked yourself to the maximum in training,” he said after Eintracht became the first Bundesliga opponent to keep a clean sheet against Leipzig this season, winning 2-0.

And then he spelled out the challenge for his players. “We are not at the level [in terms of squad strength] of a Bayern or a Dortmund, so we have to work harder in practice than a Bayern or a Dortmund. We must make a decision. Do we want to see the top of the mountain or take a rest halfway up it and enjoy the view from there?”

The view from where Leipzig are now is a little daunting. Bayern, who drew 1-1 in Leipzig in September, have not only snatched the leadership of the Bundesliga from their upstart rivals, but stolen RB’s habit of big scorelines.

Since the winter recess, the champions thumped four goals past Hertha in Berlin, five past Schalke 04, and conceded their first league goal of 2020 only last weekend, after they had already scored three times in the first half of 3-1 win at Mainz.

Ominously, Robert Lewandowski is back in his routine, of at least a goal per match, and with 22 for the season, ahead of Werner – 20 goals – in the race for Germany’s Golden Boot.

“It would be preferable to be going to Munich knowing we could afford to drop points,” said Werner, deviating a little from the corporate line. Such is Bayern’s aura as the club with all the experience of reaching the top of the mountain and keeping the view all to themselves.