To describe Grant Wahl’s review of his tour at Red Bull Arena, the new home of Red Bull New York, as gushing would be something of an understatement. Indeed, he even describes himself as “breathless” over it.

Wahl emphasises that Red Bull Arena is a “soccer stadium”, not a multi-purpose venue like so many other MLS stadiums:

Unlike so many other MLS buildings, which have a stage at one end and double as concert venues, Red Bull Arena is built for fútbol. Not one of the 25,000 seats — and they’re all seats; no benches here — has a bad view. The front row is a mere 21 feet from the sidelines and 27 feet from the endlines, the better for Juan Pablo Ángel to make a quick run and Lambeau Leap over the short retaining wall after scoring a goal.

This emphasis on the soccer won’t stop rugby tearing up the turf this summer, but Wahl’s point is well-made. The stadium is an exact copy of a Euro 2008 venue from Austria, and it shows.

Wahl waxes about the location (an improvement on the team’s former home in the Meadowlands, New Jersey); the “hip surroundings” (umm, “restaurants, retail stores and condominiums”?) and the “little things” (not so little “giant HD video boards”).

I’m trying hard, and perhaps failing, not to mock Wahl’s enthusiasm for the stadium. It’s a big moment in American soccer in some ways, and Wahl is right to emphasise the quality of the arena. It does look like it will surpass anything in MLS quite comfortably as a facility. Am I jealous of it as a Fire fan?  Well, yes…aside from those giant Red Bull logos, of course.

And that’s the catch: it’s surprising that Wahl doesn’t delve into some of the deeper issues the Red Bulls still need to prove they have overcome. He mentions the problem of the quality of the team briefly at the end of his pieces, but refuses to open the can of worms surrounding the many years of Metro and Red Bull failure on and off the field.

But we will say it: this is, after all, Red Bull Arena.

Maybe our old friend the Metrologist will pop-up to remind Grant of that, if he still frequents these parts. A week tomorrow will mark the fourth anniversary of the rebranding (renaming doesn’t do it justice) of the MetroStars as Red Bull.

Three years ago, on a blog I miss, the Metrologist wrote the following:

Who can scream out Red Bull songs with a straight face? Unintentional self-parody at its worst.

Today, March 9 2007, marks the one year anniversary of the conversion of Metro into the Red Bulls, and this string of discussions is its legacy – the magic candles flickering on the taurine-soaked birthday cake. They always re-ignite. They still vastly overshadow the actual job of supporting this team. They always will, until the last of the dyed-in-the-wool Metro traditionalists give up and find something else to do. Make a wish!

Red Bull, the corporation and its fans who have embraced the new branding (it’s not an identity, folks), will say those dyed-in-the-wool folks are past worrying about at this point, and they’ll criticise this blog for even bringing up that ghost. They like to laugh at the Metrologist, now. They wish his kind gone and maybe they are, maybe the opening of the new arena does draw a line under that era. Maybe even the Metrologist doesn’t care anymore that Red Bull took his team’s identity away from him. Maybe this doesn’t matter anymore two years further on:

What today also marks is the the ticking-over of the worst year of being a Metro fan ever. While the organization itself has been jarred, and I don’t think anyone can say for the better overall (more on that in a coming post), I think what remains of the already-tortured diehard Metro crowd has only been further alienated, divided, and turned against one another. I’ve been a part of that, on a personal level, more than I’d like to admit. What used to be a pretty cooperative community, especially online at least on the surface, now has serious lines drawn through it.

I’m not qualified to offer an opinion one way or the other on the state of New York’s culture of fan support as we approach the opening of Red Bull Arena, though I’m hoping to be there at the inaugural MLS game against the Fire on March 27th. Perhaps it is all rosy and 25,000 rabid Red Bulls fans will arise from the nation’s largest metropolis to support the team they’ve had such a problem with since 1996. That capacity is over double the Red Bulls average attendance at Giants Stadium last year, 12,491. There’s absolutely no doubt that will be improved upon at the new stadium.

But I do think there’s a little more to be said about it all than Wahl’s breathless review of the arena covers; it’s still Red Bull, as the stadium itself can’t stop reminding us, and there will still be some who will question how attached a community can become to such a recently re-branded team. It’s a discussion Red Bulls fans don’t want to have, I’m sure; the proof will be in the pudding over the next decade one way or another as we’ll find out if supporters do come out to consistently fill what Wahl calls “a truly edifying edifice” once the shine has worn off.

Quick Hits

• The “Red Knights” making their moves towards a takeover of Manchester United are calling on fans to boycott season ticket purchases to pressure the Glazers to sell.
• The spotlight has been off Newcastle United in recent times; in The Times, George Caulkin says the pressure is still on Mike Ashley to put back together the club he broke.  “Football, like heat, can generate mirages. How else, with March upon us, can we contextualise a club which, until Portsmouth nabbed their title, was widely recognised as the most gloriously demented in England, but which now resembles the very model of stability? How else to explain the otherwise inexplicable – that Mike Ashley no longer appears the battiest of owners.”
• Ridge Mahoney looks at the latest in the MLS labour dispute, edging towards the position of the players as he wonders if MLS couldn’t work out a model of free agency: “Other leagues have formulated tiers of free agency; while MLS is different in that it is a single-entity enterprise, one can’t blame the players for fighting to get at least some independence beyond the very narrow boundaries of MLS. While it follows complex formulas to calculate and stay within its salary budget, MLS can suppress salaries since there’s no real competition. It can’t match the salaries even Scandinavian teams give to young players, so it just ignores any aspect of the market except itself.”

The Sweeper appears daily. For more rambling and links throughout the day every day, follow your editor Tom Dunmore @pitchinvasion on Twitter.

Markranstädt is located a few miles from Leipzig, the largest city in the Saxony state in eastern Germany, and home to a World Cup venue (Central Stadium)  in need of a top tier tenant — though Leipzig is a region rich in football history, it has no team above the fourth tier of the German league. Red Bull’s aim is to become the dominant power in east German football through RB Leipzig, and build the club into a Bundesliga force playing at Central Stadium.

Red Bull branding kit

The takeover of Markranstädt will mark Red Bull’s fourth investment in and rebranding of a football club worldwide. Their investments so far have produced mixed results on and off the field. Their first takeover — and erasure of a club’s existing history — came in Austria near the company’s headquarters in Fuschl, where  SV Austria Salzburg were rebranded as FC Red Bull Salzburg in 2005 . The takeover and rebranding was the subject of a strong fan protest by the Violet-Whites supporters, who founded a new club, SV Austria Salzburg. Red Bull Salzburg have been successful on the field, last month clinching their second Austrian championship since the takeover.

In 2006, Red Bull took over and rebranded the New York MetroStars as Red Bull New York. Since then, the team have continued their historic mediocrity on the field, having failed to win any silverware. Poor results this season will be of concern to Red Bull ownership ahead of the team’s much delayed move to Red Bull Arena next year. The new stadium looks impressive, a doppelganger of the stadium Red Bull Salzburg recently moved in to.  So far, Red Bull New York have failed to win a strong fanbase in America’s largest market, and it’s open to question if the new stadium will prove to be the magic elixir or not.

Red Bull Arena

A lesser known third Red Bull franchise is also located on a third continent: Red Bull Brasil were founded in Sao Paulo in 2007, and have since struggled to advance from the Segunda Divisão Paulista. Red Bull seem to be following in the footsetps of that last move with the takeover of Markranstädt, who have a much lower profile than the two clubs taken over in Salzburg and New York respectively, whilst also allowing them to establish the club under Red Bull auspices outside of the Bundesliga’s tight licensing and regulation procedures.

An attraction of starting smaller is that the relatively weak Markranstädt’s fanbase will find it hard to resist Red Bull, (though some minor graffiti protest has already appeared at the club’s stadium) whose “masterplan” includes pumping in $100M over the next ten years into the club and an aim to reach the Bundesliga within eight years.

In a break from the previous Red Bull franchises, in order to meet future Bundesliga rules on membership ownership (of at least 51% of the club) and on sponsor naming, Red Bull will not own the whole club or name it as Red Bull Markranstädt. Instead, it has been renamed oh-so-subtly as RB Leipzig and the current “members” of the club are reported to all be affiliated to Red Bull. The North German Football Association (NOFV) recently approved the changes.  It’s likely that such a blatant skirting of the rules would not have washed had Red Bull taken over a well-known Bundesliga team in the same manner.

The undoubted appeal of Markranstädt to Red Bull is their location and the troubled recent history of football clubs in Saxony that leaves an opening for an ambitious franchise to fill. No club in the region is currently above the fourth tier in the German system, despite the popularity of the sport in a city with a population over 500,000 and the historic links to the game locally. As well as hosting the 2006 World Cup draw and several WC2006 games at Central Stadium (Zentralstadion), Leipzig was the birthplace of the German Football Association (DFB)  in 1900.

According to reports in Germany, Red Bull plan to move the club from their current home, the 5,500 capacity Stadion am Bad, to Central Stadium a few miles away from the 2010-11 season on.  Central Stadium is an impressive venue built for the 2006 World Cup with a capacity of 45,000 but without a club that can currently come anywhere near to filling the stadium.

Zentralstadion

Red Bull has reserved naming rights for Central Stadium from 2010 on, when the team has (they hope) won promotion to the Regionalliga, the fourth tier in German football. The stadium operating group, led by Michael Kölmel, initiated talks with Red Bull earlier this year, and SSV Markranstädt was determined to be the best choice to take over tenancy of the stadium with Red Bull’s backing.

Central Stadium most recently played host to the now insolvent FC Sachsen Leipzig, a club who only averaged a crowd of around 5,000 in the huge stadium.  It is notable that Red Bull considered investment in Sachsen themselves a couple of years ago, but due to early and active resistance from supporters of the existing club, they quickly looked elsewhere (it was the same story with Saxony Fortuna Dusseldorf, another prospective Red Bull target). To avoid large-scale fan resistance, Red Bull and Kölmel settled on smaller but promising prey in nearby Markranstädt.

The only other significant team locally is Lokomotive Leipzig, formerly VFB Leipzig, a team with a proud history but considerable present troubles.  VFB won the first national championship in 1903, and under their new name Lokomotive Leipzig, did well in the postwar years with support from the East German regime, managing some notable runs in European competition, including reaching the final of the European Cup Winners Cup in 1987.  But the fall of communism brought hard times on Lokomotive (who reverted to their original name, VfB Leipzig) and the club went bankrupt in 2004. Shortly after, the club was refounded by fans as 1. FC Lokomotive Leipzig and is now slowly working its way up from the lower reaches of the German pyramid.

The goal, therefore, is wide open for Red Bull in Leipzig to build a powerhouse in Saxony, with a ready-made world class Red Bull-branded stadium available for use and a huge potential fanbase for a top tier team. However, whether football supporters in Germany will buy into the rebranded team in any meaningful manner remains to be seen.

Photo credit: Floelz Photography on Flickr.

New York’s MetroStars were a troubled organisation, but their rebranding as Red Bull New York has hardly had fans beating down the door to Giants Stadium. Whilst that story is familiar, Ian Plenderleith this week linked Bruce Arena’s failed tenure to the Red Bulls corporate approach to football.

You have to bear in mind this isn’t just a soccer team. When Red Bull takes you over, their job ads say things like: “Candidates must demonstrate an understanding of fundamental business concepts and be familiar with current trends in the marketplace.” That’s not for the director of marketing, that’s for the post of director of youth soccer and player development, advertised earlier this year.

Arena’s a soccer man to the core. Red Bull’s a company that happens to be involved in soccer. Last year, I received some lively e-mails telling me that I was an idiot for questioning the wisdom of allowing a firm like Red Bull to invest in MLS and re-name a team after a brand. This league needs all the money it can get, I was told. If they want to put money into the game, why should we complain?

That’s a fair point, but large amounts of corporate money rarely come without conditions. Red Bull makes big demands, and it wants both business and sporting success in return for its investment. In Arena’s case, the company was bigger than the man. But when Red Bull discovers that the company can’t be bigger than the sport, how long will it stick around in soccer?

Marc de Grandpre, Managing Director of Red Bull New York, strikes me as well out of his depth. His testy conference call about Arena’s departure will hardly fill fans with confidence (“I’d like to stay away from specifics.”), as he seems to equate “resource-allocation” as inevitably leading to immediate Championship success.

Meanwhile, in Austria, it’s been over two years since Red Bull took over the club founded as SV Austria Salzburg in 1933. They rebranded it as FC Red Bull Salzburg, changed the colours and even attempted to list the club’s year of founding as 2005. Indeed, it was the attempted erasure of the club’s past as much as the renaming (Austrian clubs have long often inserted the sponsor into the team name) that most irritated supporters with a club source stating on record that “as far as Red Bull is concerned, there is no history, no tradition.”

Such inflammatory statements ensured that conflict with the traditional supporters would escalate, as this Football Supporters’ Federation pamphlet [PDF] explains:

Action was soon taken when a number of longest established supporters’ clubs joined up to form the umbrella group “Initiative Violett-Weiß” the main aim of which was to defend the traditions of Austria Salzburg through peaceful protest. Initial campaigns received encouraging local and national media coverage and attracted support from terraces across the world, most notably in Germany and Italy under the slogan “Gegen den modernen Fussball / Contro il calcio moderno”, meaning “Against Modern Football.”

Faced with some unpleasant PR, Red Bull’s corporate machinery soon hit back. “Critical” banners, such as ‘Violet & White Since 1933’ were banned from the stadium and half of the Südtribüne terrace, traditional home of the vocal violet and white supporters, was turned into seating.

An unsavoury fire-work throwing incident at the peak of the conflict was then used by Red Bull to deal with the issue in a more heavy-handed way. Whilst the six culprits were soon identified and prosecuted, Red Bull issued stadium bans to more than 50 supposed trouble makers, one of whom later turned out to be a grandmother who had purchased a ticket as a birthday present.

Negotiations between the supporters and the club soon petered out. In the vein of FC United of Manchester and AFC Wimbledon, the protesting Violet-Whites supporters’ decided to form their own club — rescuing the name and colours of SV Austria Salzburg — in 2005, playing at the 1,200 capacity ASKÖ-Sportanlage stadium. The breakaway of the club’s most vociferous supporters has left Red Bull games to be (as the corporation desired in the first place) sterile, stage-managed events according to reports.

SV Austria Salzburg (see pic above) have progressed impressively, promoted from the bottom level (2. Klasse Nord) of the Austrian pyramid last season and leading the league again this year.

Red Bull Salzburg were also initially successful, winning last year’s Austrian Bundesliga comfortably. This year, though, they lie in a disappointing fifth place, and they’ve already managed to crash out of both the Champions League and the UEFA Cup. Red Bull’s hopes of creating a globally successful footballing franchise brand seem to lie in tatters.

Plenderleith’s earlier question stands out: one really does wonder how long Red Bull will stick around in soccer, and few would shed tears over their departure.

Photos by YellowFilter, Hauben and Don Martin 37 on Flickr.