This article is about the club founded as Austria Salzburg in 1933 and renamed to Red Bull Salzburg in 2005. For the club refounded as Austria Salzburg in 2005, seeSV Austria Salzburg.
Association football club in Austria
Football club
Red Bull Salzburg
Full name
Fußballclub Red Bull Salzburg
Nickname
Die Roten Bullen (The Red Bulls)
Founded
13 September 1933; 91 years ago (asSV Austria Salzburg)
Fußballclub Red Bull Salzburg, commonly known as simplyRed Bull Salzburg, is an Austrian professionalfootball club based inWals-Siezenheim, that competes in theAustrian Bundesliga, the top flight ofAustrian Football. Their home ground is theRed Bull Arena. Due to sponsorship restrictions, the club is known asFC Salzburg and wears a modified crest when playing inFIFA andUEFA competitions.[1][2]
The club was originally known asSV Austria Salzburg and played under various sponsored names, including SV Casino Salzburg and SVWüstenrot Salzburg. In 2005, it was acquired byRed Bull GmbH, which rebranded the club and changed its traditional violet and white colours to red and white. This transformation led some supporters to establish a new club,SV Austria Salzburg, in response.
Founded in 1933, the club won its firstBundesliga title in 1994, which was the first of three in the span of four seasons which also saw them reach the1994 UEFA Cup final. The club has won seventeen league titles and nineAustrian Cups, all nine of which came asdoubles, as well as threeAustrian Supercups. Salzburg has dominated Austrian football over the recent past, winning 14 league titles in 17 seasons including 10 in a row from 2014 to 2023.
FC RB Salzburg was founded on 13 September 1933 asSV Austria Salzburg, after the merger of the city's two clubs, Hertha and Rapid.[3] In 1950, the club was dissolved but re-founded later the same year. It reached the Austrian top flight in 1953, and finished 9th of 14 clubs in its first season there, avoiding relegation by five points.[4]
Vienna-bornErich Probst was Salzburg's first-ever international, earning the last of his 19Austrian caps on 27 March 1960.[5] Adolf Macek, who made the first of his four international appearances on 9 October 1965, was the club's first local player to earn a cap for Austria.[6]
Salzburg were top-flight runners-up for the first time in the 1970–71 season, gaining 43 points toWacker Innsbruck's 44.[7] The club's first-ever European campaign was in the1971–72 UEFA Cup, and it was eliminated 5–4 on aggregate by Romanian club UTA despite a 3–1 home victory in the second leg. In 1974, Salzburg reached the Austrian Cup final for the first time, losing 2–1 away toAustria Wien in the first leg before a 1–1 home draw in the second.[8]
Salzburg moved to their current stadium, now known as theRed Bull Arena in 2003.
In 1978, the club's name was changed toSV Casino Salzburg and in 1997, to SVWüstenrot Salzburg, due to a sponsorship deal with an Austrian financial services corporation. The team often remained referred to asSV Austria Salzburg.
Salzburg reached their first and so far only European final, the1994 UEFA Cup final, where they lost both legs 1–0 toInter Milan.[9] That same season, Salzburg won their firstBundesliga title, beating Austria Wien by 51 points to 49.[10] The title was retained the following season as Salzburg beatSturm Graz on goal difference.[11] The 1995–96 season saw a drop to eighth place, one above a relegation play-off,[12] but the club's third title in four seasons was won in 1997 as they beat holdersRapid Wien by three points.[13]
Salzburg's inauguralUEFA Champions League campaign in1994–95 saw them reach the group stage by beating Israel'sMaccabi Haifa 5–2 on aggregate.[14] They were drawn into Group D with holders and eventual finalistsMilan and eventual winnersAjax, as well asAEK Athens. Despite drawing both matches with Ajax, Salzburg picked up a solitary 3–1 win away inAthens and were eliminated in third place.[15]
TheRed Bull company headed by Dietrich Mateschitz purchased the Salzburg Sport AG on 6 April 2005. The club's bylaws were amended so that the Red Bull Salzburg GmbH has the sole right to appoint and recall board members of the club. After the takeover, Mateschitz changed the club's name, management, and staff, declaring "this is a new club with no history". The club's website initially claimed that it was founded in 2005, but was ordered to remove this claim by theAustrian Football Association. The new authority removed all trace of violet from the club logo and the team now play in the colours of red and white, to the consternation of much of the club's traditional support.[17] A small pair of wings form the motif of the new club crest, displayed on the team jersey, in accordance with Red Bull's commercial slogan at the time: "gives you wings". This complete re-branding of the team proved very similar to Red Bull's treatment of its twoFormula One racing teams,Red Bull Racing andScuderia Toro Rosso, now rebranded asRB Formula One Team. Red Bull, however, would not completely follow this precedent when it acquired theMetroStars club inMajor League Soccer (MLS) in the United States; while it rebranded the team as theNew York Red Bulls, it chose to recognise the MetroStars' history.
Red Bull Salzburg, October 2005
The traditional supporters tried to resist the radical changes and formed their own movement in order to regain some of the tradition. Several fan-clubs throughout Europe voiced their support in what they saw as a fight against the growing commercialisation of football. However, after five months of protests and talks between the club owners and traditional fans, no compromise was reached. On 15 September 2005, the "violet" supporters stated that the talks had irreversibly broken down and efforts to reach an agreement would be terminated.
This gave rise to two separate fan groups: the "Red-Whites", who support "Red Bull Salzburg" and the "Violet-Whites", who want to preserve the 72-year-old tradition and refuse to support the rebranded club. The Violet-Whites ultimately formed a new club,Austria Salzburg after viewing Red Bull's offer to maintain the original colours only for the goalkeeper's socks at away games as an insult.[18]
The club's history going back to 1933 was later restored on the club website.[19]
DutchmanRicardo Moniz coached Red Bull to a Bundesliga and cup double in the 2011–12 season.GermanRoger Schmidt was the team's coach from 2012 until 2014.
In May 2006, Red Bull announced on their website that they had hired veteran Italian coachGiovanni Trapattoni, together with his former player, GermanFIFA World Cup winnerLothar Matthäus, as co-trainers. The pair initially denied having reached a deal, but officially signed on 23 May 2006. On 28 April 2007, Red Bull ultimately won the2006–07 Bundesliga by a comfortable margin with five games still left in the season after drawing 2–2 with previous season's champions Austria Wien.[20]
Red Bull were beaten byShakhtar Donetsk in the third qualifying round[21][22] of the2007–08 UEFA Champions League, and were then knocked out of the2007–08 UEFA Cup in the first round by AEK Athens. On 13 February 2008, Giovanni Trapattoni confirmed that he would be taking over as the newRepublic of Ireland national team manager in May. In his final season, the club finished as runners-up, six points behind champions Rapid Wien.[23] Trapattoni was succeeded byCo Adriaanse, under whom they finished as champions, but he left after one year. His successor wasHuub Stevens. On 14 May 2010, Stevens' Red Bull retained the Bundesliga.[24]
Stevens was replaced by DutchmanRicardo Moniz at the end of the 2010–11 season, in which Red Bull were denied a third consecutive title by Sturm Graz, who won the league by a three-point margin.[25] Red Bull finished second in the league, and qualified for the following season'sUEFA Europa League. Moniz was ordered to integrate young players from the Junior squad: at the beginning of the 2011–12 seasonDaniel Offenbacher,Martin Hinteregger,Georg Teigl andMarco Meilinger were promoted to the first team. In the 2011–12 season, Red Bull won theBundesliga league title andCup double.
After the 2011–12 season, Moniz departed his post despite having a year remaining on his contract. The new coach for the 2012–13 season wasRoger Schmidt, who came fromSC Paderborn of the German2. Bundesliga. In July 2012, Red Bull were knocked out of the Champions League in the second qualifying round againstF91 Dudelange of Luxembourg, losing the first leg 1–0 away, followed by a 4–3 home win which saw the club eliminated on away goals.[26]
After that, the team was changed fundamentally. At the end of the transfer period, new players were purchased:Valon Berisha,Kevin Kampl,Håvard Nielsen,Sadio Mané,Isaac Vorsah, andRodnei. In the 2012–13 season, the team finished second in the league, behind champions Austria Wien. They recaptured the league title the following season with an 11-point margin over the runners-up. Also, in the 2014–15 season, they won both the Bundesliga and the cup as they did again in the 2015–16 season. In December 2014, the coach Peter Zeidler was dismissed and replaced for the last two matches in the first half of the season byThomas Letsch. ThenÓscar García took over.
Also in the next 2016–17 season, Salzburg won both the Bundesliga and the cup. In 2018, Salzburg lost the cup final against Sturm Graz. At the beginning of the 2017–18 season,Marco Rose became coach after Óscar García left the club. In theUEFA Europa League, Salzburg reached the semi-finals in which they lost toOlympique de Marseille 2–3 on aggregate after extra time, having won during the campaign againstBorussia Dortmund andLazio.
After eleven failed attempts to reach the group stage, Red Bull only managed to qualify directly to the2019–20 Champions League, since the 2018–19 UEFA Champions League winner,Liverpool, qualified to the competition via their domestic league.[27]
In 2021, Salzburg had a transfer balance of €218 million for the last five seasons, behindUEFA Champions League participantsAjax (€242 million) andBenfica (more than €335 million). Salzburg had a positive balance in every year.[29] In the 2020–21 and 2021–22 seasons, they reached both the Championship and the Cup finals. In the2021–22 UEFA Champions League, they reached the knock-out stage for the first time. In the round of 16, they played versusBayern Munich.[30]
In 2009, Red Bull bought an amateur club inLeipzig, Germany and renamed themRasenBallsport Leipzig (so named to circumvent local rules on corporate naming) with the aim of establishing a leading branded team in that country[33][34] in a similar mould to its existing franchises in Salzburg and other locations.[35] Over the next decade, Leipzig became the owners' main football project, and the close relationship between the teams was exemplified by the number of players moving between them (Georg Teigl,Marcel Sabitzer,Yordy Reyna andStefan Ilsanker all transferred from Salzburg to Leipzig) with some of the Austrian fans becoming increasingly annoyed at their best players being signed by the 'step-sibling' club in their mission to climb through thelevels of German football.[36][37] There are also links between theiryouth systems[38] andscouting networks.[39]
Having finished as runners-up in theirdebut season in the German top flight, RB Leipzig gained entry to continental football for the first time, specifically the2017–18 UEFA Champions League for which Red Bull Salzburg had also qualified asAustrian champions; this raised the issue of a possible conflict of interest between the clubs due to the level of influence exerted by Red Bull over both teams and the close sporting relationship between them in various aspects.[40][34][41] After examining the operational structures during June 2017,UEFA declared themselves satisfied under their regulations that the two clubs (particularly Salzburg) were suitably independent from the Red Bull corporation, and sufficiently distinct from one another, for both to be admitted to their competitions.[42][43] In the first season following that ruling, both reached the quarter-finals of the2017–18 UEFA Europa League but did not play each other, with RB Leipzig eliminated byOlympique de Marseille who then also knocked out Salzburg in the semi-finals. However, in thenext edition of the same competition, RB Leipzig and Red Bull Salzburg were drawn together inGroup B to meet competitively for the first time.[44][45] Salzburg were the victors in both fixtures between the clubs (3–2 in Germany, 1–0 in Austria)[46][47] and also won all their other matches to top the group, while Leipzig failed to progress after dropping further points againstCeltic andRosenborg.[48] In December 2020,Dominik Szoboszlai poised to become the second RB Salzburg player to move to RB Leipzig in space of 6 months afterHwang Hee-chan completed the switch in summer.[49] In 2023, they completed deals of bothNicolas Seiwald (€20 million) andBenjamin Šeško (€24 million) from Salzburg for a total of €54 million.[50][51]
1976 to 1978:SV Sparkasse Austria Salzburg (Erste Group savings bank sponsorship)
1978 to 1997:SV Casino Salzburg (Casinos Austria sponsorship)
1997 to 2005:SV Wüstenrot Salzburg (Wüstenrot-Gruppe sponsorship)
2005 to present:FC Red Bull Salzburg (FC Salzburg in European competition)
Red Bull Salzburg's name and crest have changed several times throughout the club's history as a result of mergers, sponsorships, and acquisitions. Though "Austria" has not been part of the club's name since 1978, until 2005 the club had been colloquially referred to as Austria Salzburg by fans and media.
Due to UEFA sponsorship regulations, "Red Bull" may not be present in the club's name or crest in international European competitions. The club plays as FC Salzburg and uses a modified crest, with Red Bull present only on their kits as a sponsor.
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined underFIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined underFIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
Note: Flags indicate national team as defined underFIFA eligibility rules; some limited exceptions apply. Players may hold more than one non-FIFA nationality.
^Flohr, Sven (13 June 2009)."Red Bull reißt Leipzig aus dem Fußballschlaf" [Red Bull rips Leipzig out of its football sleep].Die Welt (in German). Berlin: WeltN24 GmbH. Retrieved1 September 2018.
^Spannagel, Lars (16 June 2009)."New York, Salzburg, Markranstädt: Der RB Leipzig kommt" [New York, Salzburg, Markranstädt: RB Leipzig is coming].Der Tagesspiegel (in German). Berlin: Verlag Der Tagesspiegel GmbH. Retrieved1 September 2018.
^"Red Bull Salzburg Fans singen gegen RB Leipzig" [Red Bull Salzburg fans sing against RB Leipzig].Faszination Fankurve (in German). Brühl: Faszination Fankurve, Sole trader: Johannes Mäling. 30 April 2015. Retrieved1 September 2018.
^Fritz, Thomas (27 June 2015)."Wenn Red-Bull-Fans "Scheiß RB Leipzig" singen" [When Red Bull fans sing "shit RB Leipzig"].Zeit Online (in German). Hamburg: Zeit Online GmbH. Retrieved1 September 2018.
^"So funktioniert das "System Red Bull"" [How the "Red Bull system" works].Inside 11 (in German). Bubenheim: Inside 11, Sole trader:Julian Beck. 17 August 2014. Retrieved1 September 2018.
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