Are results flattering RB Leipzig?
How much better have they actually gotten under Domenico Tedesco and is it enough to finish fourth?
Hello again! After a short trip and a short illness, I’m finally ready (and able (and willing)) to end the radio silence to write something about the Bundesliga again.
This week, after their draw at the weekend, it’s RB Leipzig and how much they’ve actually improved since Domenico Tedesco took over from Jesse Marsch.
But I also just wanted to add, for anyone who wasn’t aware, that it was nice to see the Bundesliga support those Ukraine over the weekend, good to see Schalke end ties with Gazprom, and good to see Borussia Dortmund remove former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder as an honorary member after he refused to walk away from his relationship with Vladimir Putin.
Now onto the on-field business …
RB Leipzig are having a great 2022. Six wins from eight Bundesliga games have put them firmly back in the race for a Champions League spot. Domenico Tedesco has improved things since Jesse Marsch agreed to leave the club as he and the squad just didn’t fit together.
“It’s an outstanding team, and Jesse is a good coach. But, after careful deliberation, we realised it wasn’t the perfect fit,” sporting director Oliver Mintzlaff said back in December and Marsch agreed.
His pressing football had been paired with a squad built for and educated in possession play under Julian Nagelsmann. Leipzig’s response was to hire Domenico Tedesco, who had preached pressing at Schalke but of a different ilk. Everything seems to happen in football matches with a Marsch side involved. As for Tedesco’s teams, you’ll find them at the opposite end of the ‘good watch for the neutrals’ scale.
Marsch’s Ralf Rangnick-inspired approach means chaotic transitions. In 14 matches against Marsch’s Leipzig, no team bettered their season’s average pass completion. No team registered more than Bayern’s 77.6% pass completion against them.
That number has been bettered by the opposition in six of the 11 games Tedesco’s Leipzig have faced. The same goes for Leipzig on the ball, too. They didn’t reach 85% pass completion in any of Marsch’s 14 games in charge but have done so in five of the 11 with Tedesco in the dugout.
The American sits on the ‘all’ side of the ‘all-or-nothing’ question when it comes to Tedesco’s approach is more ‘nothing is actually fine’ than full throttle.
On the surface it looks to have worked: Leipzig have won six wins of their eight games in 2022, drawing one (against Freiburg) and losing one (to Bayern).
They played brilliantly against the champions too and were perhaps unlucky to lose. That game showed better than any other that this squad wasn't as ill-suited to Marsch as everyone thought, they were just way too gung-ho and needed to compromise to on his desire to press and press and press.
Marsch himself admitted he tried to adjust but when the foot came off of that particular gas pedal, Leipzig were in a halfway house of not really committing to anyone’s style. It didn’t work and he was gone by the start of December having led a team that could attack well but was far too exposed defensively. Only Bayern had a higher xG up to that point in the season but Leipzig conceded more than 1.5 xG per game, putting them firmly in the bottom half of the league defensively.
Have Tedesco’s Leipzig been better? Defensively, yes. Offensively, no.
Dig a little deeper and the sum of it all is a little unconvincing.
They picked up four points from three games before Christmas in a fairly unconvincing start but he’s since had plenty of time in charge to really make the team his own and the results have been good.
But context is crucial. They’ve won six of their eight in 2022 but lost to Bayern (first in the table), drew with Freiburg (sixth) and haven’t yet played the sides in second, third, fourth, or seventh. They lost three of those four (to Hoffenheim, Leverkusen, Union Berlin) to spell the end of Marsch’s run earlier in the season.
Even some of the recent wins come with asterisks. They played over 70 minutes against 10 men when they beat Mainz, they didn’t complete a single pass into the penalty area as they beat struggling Stuttgart, and scored three goals from three shots in the win over Köln.
The good news for Leipzig is that they remain so ridiculously talented. Tedesco’s approach — more dull football than the short-lived Marsch era — makes games more controlled. It doesn’t leave much room for error at either end but it does mean Leipzig can just hope having more talent than their opponent is enough to win most weeks.
It has been so far but much tougher tests are now around the corner and playing close games against sides that can actually match them for talent will surely mean more mixed results.
Perhaps they’ll manage to do enough to pip an impressive Hoffenheim side and a well-drilled Freiburg, they have a lot more talent than both sides, but don’t let their recent run of form fool you: there is still a lot of room for improvement.