Red Bull Salzburg are on a stampede in Europa League

The Austrian club are flying on the back of a competition record eight straight wins ahead of their last-16 first-leg clash away to Swiss club Basel, writes Ian Hawkey.

Red Bull Salzburg’s Jonathan Soriano, left, and Kevin Kampl were both on target against Ajax in the last round of the Europa League, a tie the Austrian side won 6-1 over two legs. Kerstin Joensson / AP PhotoShow less

The last 16 of the Europa League, whose first legs take place tonight, offers some tantalising neighbourly jousts.
There is a true derby, in the Betis-Sevilla match. There is a grudge-laden Serie A spat between Juventus and Fiorentina. And then there is the cross-border clash between the league-leaders of Switzerland and of Austria.
From the winner of Basel against Red Bull Salzburg may well emerge the most serious dark-horse candidate to win the competition.
The shortest journey from Salzburg to Basel is about 250 miles, via Germany, the nation whose football culture tends to overshadow those of the two countries to its south.
Typically, the best young Swiss and Austrian players aim to spend their peak years abroad. Witness the Swiss prodigy Xherdan Shaqiri and the Austrian captain David Alaba.
Both are at Bayern Munich. But ask the reigning European club champions what they think of the standard of football at Basel, from whom Bayern signed Shaqiri in 2011, or Salzburg, and you would get a very respectful assessment.
Basel's rise over the past three years includes a number of notable victories, including wins over Manchester United and Chelsea, and above all a 1-0 victory over Bayern two years ago, in the knockout phase of the Uefa Champions League.
And here is a result from 2014 that ought to raise eyebrows: Salzburg 3, Bayern Munich 0. Granted, it was a mid-season, winter-break friendly in January, but it still took the best club side in the world by surprise.
Said the Bayern coach Pep Guardiola: "Salzburg play with an intensity I don't think I have come across before."
Opponents in the top flight of Austrian football share that feeling. Salzburg have a powerful claim to be the most domestically dominant club in western Europe, their current progress to their own championship more cushioned even than that of Bayern in Germany and Olympiakos in Greece.
Last weekend's win over Ried was their 10th in succession. Their advantage over second-placed Grodig stands at 25 points with 10 matches to go. Their goal difference? Plus-65.
Are they just swaggering middleweights in a land of featherweights and flyweights? Not when you consider Salzburg's run in the Europa League, where they already have established a competition record of eight successive wins, the most recent a 6-1 aggregate triumph over Ajax.
So what is fuelling the machine? Mainly, a generous patron, the energy drink manufacturer who took a controlling interest in the club in 2005 and has since made Salzburg a cornerstone of a global football strategy.
When Red Bull, the company founded by the Austrian businessman Dietrich Mateschitz in the 1980s, took over Austria Salzburg, the club were close to extinction and in financial crisis.
Initially, the re-brand, which included a change of name, estranged some supporters. Success has since consolidated the fan base while the vision, to elevate an Austrian club into a serious European force, has now begun to look viable.
The project has attracted a number of big-name coaches on the way, such as Giovanni Trapattoni and Lothar Matthaus, but the architect of the current run is Roger Schmidt, a German appointed by the director of football, Ralf Rangnick. Rangnick, also German, is the coach who guided Schalke to the semi-finals of the 2011 Champions League and, before then, took Hoffenheim from the third tier of the German football to the Bundesliga's top division.
Under his watch, several young Salzburg players have developed fine reputations, notably Martin Hinteregger, the Austrian defender, the Senegalese attacking midfielder, Sadio Mane, and the Brazilian striker, Alan. The Spanish striker Jonathan Soriano, 28, is enjoying the best phase of a career that never quite took off in three years on Barcelona's books.Other clubs from the Champions League are eyeing a number of them.
Meanwhile, executives from bigger clubs are wondering whether Red Bull might soon become as influential a brand in elite football as it is in motorsport's Formula One.
Salzburg are but one branch of the empire. Rangnick is also overseer of RB Leipzig, a German club now under the company's umbrella and rapidly moving up the divisions. New York Red Bulls, where Thierry Henry leads the line, are an established force in North America's Major League Soccer. The empire also extends to clubs, with an academy emphasis, in Ghana and Brazil.
That is quite a network. Tonight, though, the aim is to cross back over the border from Switzerland with that excellent Europa League record reasonably intact.
[e-mail]