Neel Shelat continues his assessment of multi-club group transfer pathways by looking at the energy drinks branding gurus who created the most distinct identity among MCGs, Red Bull
Red Bull are best known for their multi-club ownership model in the world of football. Although their network is only about half as big as City Football Group’s, they have been in the business for even longer after starting out close to two decades ago with the takeovers of Austria Salzburg and the New York MetroStars. They have gone on to replicate such an approach in Brazil, Germany, and Japan most recently, and they also bought a minority stake in Leeds United last year.
While Red Bull’s treatment of the existing clubs they take over has drawn criticism, their management of their MCG certainly merits closer study. They were among the pioneers of developing player and coaching pathways across their clubs and have enjoyed some great success in certain cases.
(Before we begin, some notes on the data collection and tagging for this series:
- MCGs are defined as clubs with a common owner. So, clubs in which MCG owners have minority stakes have been included, but clubs who only have partnerships have been excluded.
- Transfers between clubs have only been counted if completed in the period that they are/were in the same MCG.
- Loans that were later converted to permanent transfers have only been classified as permanent transfers.
- Similarly, free transfers have been classified as permanent transfers
- Unless explicitly excluded, transfers between second/youth teams have been included.)
Salzburg to Leipzig: The Well-Trodden Path
Although Red Bull now own clubs in four different continents, they have only really developed one intra-MCG pathway. In fact, they have orchestrated more transfers between Salzburg and Leipzig than all other routes combined. Of course, the biggest chunk of players have gone from Austria to Germany, especially since RB Leipzig won promotion to the top flight.
Interestingly, since Leipzig reached the Bundesliga in 2016, all but one player to go down this route has been under 23-years-old. Red Bull’s primary goal for this pathway evidently is to develop and platform their brightest young talents, with a view to eventually sell them on for a significant profit. Indeed, that is one of the defining principles of their global strategy. As the below table shows, they have been successful on a good few occasions so far:
| Player | Transfer Year | Market Value at the time (€) | Appearances for Leipzig | Subsequent Transfer Fee (€) |
| Naby Keïta | 2016 | 11m | 71 | 60m |
| Benno Schmitz | 2016 | 900,000 | 19 | 200,000 |
| Bernardo | 2016 | 1m | 49 | 10m |
| Dayot Upamecano | 2017 | 5m | 154 | 42.5m |
| Konrad Laimer | 2017 | 8m | 190 | Free |
| Amadou Haidara | 2019 | 20m | 210 | N/A |
| Hannes Wolf | 2019 | 12m | 5 | 11m |
| Hwang Hee-chan | 2020 | 10m | 29 | 16.7m |
| Dominik Szoboszlai | 2021 | 25m | 91 | 70m |
| Benjamin Šeško | 2023 | 24m | 71 | N/A |
| Nicolas Seiwald | 2023 | 20m | 52 | N/A |
All transfers from RB Salzburg to RB Leipzig since 2016.
Besides Leipzig’s ever-improving stature in European football, the rise of FC Liefering has contributed to the success of these transfers. Around the same time as Leipzig’s promotion to the Bundesliga, Red Bull placed a greater emphasis on youth development with their second team in Austria. Over the last decade or so, Liefering’s squads have almost exclusively been made up of under-19 players. This has created a multi-step pathway whereby Red Bull’s most promising teenagers (including academy prospects and signings from other parts of the world) start out at Liefering before making their way into the Salzburg side and potentially earning a move to Leipzig in a couple of years. The likes of Konrad Laimer, Amadou Haidara, Dominik Szoboszlai, Benjamin Šeško, and Nicolas Seiwald have all followed this roadmap.
Coaching Pathway
The geographic and cultural proximity of Salzburg and Leipzig surely are big factors behind the success of the player pathways between them, but another important aspect is the consistent tactical similarity between the two clubs. Indeed, Red Bull have implemented an overarching tactical identity across their sides, so they have naturally also developed some coaching pathways in the process.
In fact, their most recent appointments in Austria and Germany both had previous experience in the RB ecosystem. Newly-appointed Salzburg head Thomas Letsch spent a couple of seasons in charge of Liefering close to a decade ago and also had a brief stint as Salzburg’s interim head coach. Marco Rose, the man currently in the hot seat in Leipzig, had spent over six years across Salzburg’s youth and senior teams in the 2010s.
In both cases, Red Bull appointed coaches with previous experience in their MCG rather than shifting someone across as they like to do with players. The likely explanation behind that is that their coaching pathways are geared towards getting the best out of their teams, whereas their player pathways are ultimately used to maximise profit through transfer fees. Additionally, there isn’t a limited development timeline for coaches as there is for players, so they can afford to let coaches drift in and out of their MCG.
Perhaps the only coach to progress directly through multiple steps of the Red Bull pathway so far is Jesse Marsch. He moved to Germany in 2018 after leading the New York Red Bulls for over three years.
The American tactician spent a full season as Ralf Rangnick’s assistant before being sent across to take over as Salzburg’s head coach.
After two successful campaigns, he earned a return to Leipzig as the main man in the coaching staff. Although he did not enjoy much success in that stint, he did later get appointed by Leeds United and spent a year with them.
Gerhard Struber followed a somewhat similar route as well. He started out in Austria, spending over a decade in a variety of roles across Salzburg’s youth divisions and Liefering. His first senior head coaching jobs came elsewhere, but he returned to Red Bull as the Major League Soccer side’s head coach in 2020.
Despite not enjoying a great deal of success in the Big Apple, he was brought back to Austria to be Salzburg’s head coach at the start of the 2023/24 season. Of course, that move did not go well as the team’s decade-long dominance of the Austrian Bundesliga ended that season. Struber was sacked before the end of the campaign and is now in charge of FC Köln.
Besides players, Red Bull have also used Liefering to develop some of their coaches. Even if we discount interim stints, there are three coaches who were directly promoted from Liefering to Salzburg, namely Peter Zeidler, Bo Svensson, and Peter Zeidler. Onur Cinel also spent a season in charge of Liefering and is currently one of Letsch’s assistants at Salzburg, so he might have a chance of joining the list.
Global Potential
While Red Bull have evidently enjoyed a good deal of success with their Salzburg to Leipzig pathway, it would seem that they are yet to fully realise the potential of their global network. In fact, they have just organised 11 permanent transfers to date involving at least one of the other RB clubs. Even if we include Leeds United (and it must be said, both Leeds and Red Bull deny that the MCG has any input into transfers, scouting, or football strategy), that number only goes up to 16.
There surely is an element of missed opportunities in this respect, especially given the location of their other clubs. Both Major League Soccer and the Brazilian Série A are hubs for youth development in the Americas, with many of the competitions’ best prospects going on to make waves in Europe.
Indeed, many of those who have left the American Red Bull clubs have gone on to do pretty well for themselves. However, the vast majority of them have gone across to a different stepping stone before earning their big move. As the below tables detail, it would seem that Red Bull have effectively missed out on a good chunk of revenue this way:
| Player | Age at the time | Transfer Year | Transfer Fee (€m) | Buying Club | Appearances for Buying Club | Subsequent Transfer Fee (€m) |
| Helinho | 24 | 2024 | 13.5 | Deportivo Toluca | 11 | N/A |
| Claudinho | 24 | 2021 | 12 | Zenit Saint Petersburg | 124 | 20 |
| Natan | 22 | 2023 | 10 | Napoli | 21 | N/A |
| Artur | 25 | 2023 | 8 | Palmeiras | 51 | 15 |
| Léo Ortiz | 28 | 2024 | 7 | Flamengo | 43 | N/A |
| Emiliano Martínez | 23 | 2023 | 5 | FC Midtjylland | 82 | 7.15 |
| Pedrinho | 22 | 2023 | 3.5 | Lokomotiv Moscow | 9 | N/A |
| Kevin Lomónaco | 23 | 2025 | 2.88 | Independiente | 24 | N/A |
| Fabrício Bruno | 25 | 2022 | 2.5 | Flamengo | 148 | 7 |
| Douglas Mendes | 19 | 2023 | 2 | RB Salzburg | 0 | N/A |
Red Bull’s 10 most expensive player sales from Bragantino.
| Player | Age at the time | Transfer Year | Transfer Fee (€m) | Buying Club | Appearances for Buying Club | Subsequent Transfer Fee (€m) |
| Frankie Amaya | 23 | 2024 | 3.75 | Deportivo Toluca | 18 | N/A |
| Dante Vanzeir | 26 | 2025 | 3 | KAA Gent | 3 | N/A |
| Tyler Adams | 19 | 2019 | 2.63 | RB Leipzig | 103 | 17 |
| John Tolkin | 22 | 2025 | 2.5 | Holstein Kiel | 2 | N/A |
| Caden Clark | 18 | 2021 | 1.82 | RB Leipzig | 0 | N/A |
| Luquinhas | 27 | 2024 | 1.35 | Fortaleza | 10 | N/A |
| Kemar Lawrence | 27 | 2020 | 1.28 | Anderlecht | 17 | 0.55 |
| Cristian Cásseres Jr. | 23 | 2023 | 1 | Toulouse | 63 | N/A |
| Andrés Reyes | 25 | 2024 | 0.76 | San Diego FC | N/A | N/A |
| Amir Murillo | 23 | 2020 | 0.68 | Anderlecht | 134 | 2.5 |
Red Bull’s 10 most expensive player sales from New York since 2018.
There are quite a few interesting observations to take away here. For one, Red Bull have managed to make much bigger sales from Brazil than from the United States. Even so, many of the players who fetched big transfer fees in Bragantino went on to make bigger moves elsewhere. A couple of them even did so from fellow Brazilian clubs, which should surely be a source of frustration. All things considered, it is a little puzzling that Red Bull have only permanently transferred two players from Bragantino to one of their sister clubs.
That number only goes up to three in New York, but that is about the only commonality between the two American clubs. NYRB have not brought in too many big transfer fees, and only a couple of their top sales have gone on to be clear-cut successes. The best of the lot has been Tyler Adams, who did stay within the MCG by moving to Leipzig. Five players on this list have only moved in the last year, so it is too early to definitively judge them.
Crucially, both of these tables show that Red Bull very much can replicate their model of developing and selling young players in Brazil and New York. In theory, then, there should be no reason why they cannot refine this approach by incorporating these clubs into a global pathway, thus generating greater revenue for themselves rather than other clubs. Incidentally, the different competitive levels of their teams are perfectly balanced to create a multi-step pathway.
| Club | MCG Ranking | Club Strength+ Global Ranking | Global Rankings Tier |
| RB Leipzig | 1st | 20th | 1 |
| RB Salzburg | 2nd | 73rd | 1 |
| Red Bull Bragantino | 3rd | 157th | 2 |
| New York Red Bulls | 4th | 270th | 3 |
| RB Omiya Ardija | 5th | 1,197th | 7 |
While others surely have a lot to learn from the RB MCG’s pathway development, it would seem that Red Bull themselves also have room for improvement.
Stats courtesy Transfermarkt and FotMob
Header image copyright IMAGO / Jan Huebner
