Bundesliga 2026/27 Tactical Previews | RasenBallSport Leipzig | OneFootball

Our Get German Football News Bundesliga 2026/27 tactical previews section continues with a look at RB Leipzig. The German Red Bulls spent last season doing almost exactly what everyone had asked them to do. Ole Werner exceeded expectations, bringing Champions League football back to Saxony. This somehow proved insufficient. A year ago, after another enormous summer rebuild, the author looked over Ole Werner’s newly assembled collection of aggressively young footballers and concluded that the squad was plainly good enough to drag Leipzig back into Europe. By Christmas, that prediction was already beginning to look rather conservative. Werner’s reconstruction appeared comfortably ahead of schedule. Leipzig eventually finished fourth.

Naturally, they fired the coach.

The reasoning behind the sacking doesn’t make a great deal of sense in the author’s opinion. One can delve deeply into the stats, claiming that Werner’s team didn’t cover enough kilometers per match or didn’t engage in enough high-intensity runs. Conversely, one can also look at the number of sprints per match or the pass completion rate and conclude that Werner was doing an excellent job. Was the switch to Martin Demichelis grounded in data-driven footballing analysis? Or did RB management simply want a more exciting personality with a full head of hair? The reaction of sporting executive Marcel Schäfer suggests the latter. Schäfer – through his public statements – dropped strong hints that the latter was the case. RB simply wanted someone more exciting.

Alas, we are where we are. The figure rumored to be one of the biggest advocates of Werner’s dismissal, new Bundestrainer Jürgen Klopp, is gone from the Red Bull setup. So too is Ivorian sensation Yan Diomande. Ole Werner delivered the required destination and was dismissed because Red Bull disliked the route. Martín Demichelis must now reach the same destination while driving considerably faster—and somebody sold his best passenger to Real Madrid. None of this suggests Demichelis is a poor appointment. The former Mallorca gaffer – thanks to nine years as a player and coach with Bayern – speaks excellent German and knows his German football.

Demichelis’ relegation with Mallorca also had little to do with him.

RasenBallSport Leipzig

As is always the case in Leipzig, the squad-planning department has been busy enough to require its own air-traffic controller. Busy, however, is not the same thing as finished. The defensive reconstruction makes considerably more sense than it did a few months ago and the midfield should eventually contain an almost indecent amount of talent once everyone stops getting injured or ill. Further forward, the Christopher Nkunku signing addresses quite a bit. Late loan moves have gotten the roster down to a manageable 31 professionals.

One lingering complication concerns squad payroll. Schäfer and sporting CEO Oliver Mintzlaff structured the contracts of new arrivals last season so that bonuses were automatically activated in the event of European qualification. Naturally, these bonuses were tiered. Champions League qualification triggered the big bucks. RB arrived at their highest objective quicker than many thought they would. The result obviously didn’t so much break a club so flush with corporate cash as create some accounting headaches for those attempting to put everything in order.

Squad cleanup was thus rendered complicated, but will probably still be wrapped up soon.

Notes on personnel shifts, RB Leipzig

Estimated Summer Transfer Balance = +€127m

Yan Diomande’s record departure to Real Madrid must obviously lead here. That loss would feel less significant had the first attempts to address it gone smoothly. They did not. The planned Fisnik Asllani transfer collapsed over medical concerns, removing one possible answer at centre-forward. Leipzig still want another winger as well, but the Said El Mala pursuit led nowhere. Christopher Nkunku’s return still doesn’t constitute a complete solution. Demichelis himself has already said he still requires “a few players.” For a team whose minimum objective remains Champions League qualification, the unfinished portion of the shopping list happens to contain several rather important items.

There has at least been substantial work elsewhere. Maxime Estève arrived from Burnley for a base fee of around €25m and is expected to step directly into the left centre-back role. The 24-year-old brings the left foot, athleticism and buildup confidence Leipzig specifically wanted, although a thigh problem complicated the closing stages of his preparation. Rocco Reitz, acquired from Gladbach for more than €20m and tied down through 2031, effectively replaces some of the drive lost with Xaver Schlager’s move to Nottingham. Abdoul Koné, meanwhile, looks to be more of a developmental prospect.

The goalkeeper transition is complete. Péter Gulácsi’s departure for Villarreal ends one of the longest associations with the club, and Maarten Vandevoordt finally enters a season as the undisputed number one after spending much of the previous campaign waiting for the succession to become official. Ørjan Nyland supplies experienced competition without fundamentally disturbing that hierarchy. Loïs Openda, Lutsharel Geertruida, and Eljif Elmas have been successfully moved on while Arthur Vermeeren and Lukas Klostermann remain on expensive contracts despite no longer possessing meaningful sporting perspectives.

Overall, matters are getting there.

Notes from pre-season, RB Leipzig

Martin Demichelis spent much of his first Leipzig pre-season attempting to solve a problem familiar to anyone assembling flat-pack furniture: the instructions were reasonably clear, but several important pieces were still missing. The former Bayern defender wants RB to play with intensity, aggressive pressing and quick vertical attacks after turnovers without surrendering possession and control entirely. A 4-3-3 with attacking full-backs and a positionally disciplined six gradually emerged as the preferred structure. The difficulty was actually getting the intended personnel onto the pitch. Rocco Reitz spent most of summer recovering from a serious infection, Christoph Baumgartner remained in rehabilitation, and Assan Ouédraogo suffered a shoulder injury just as he was beginning to look particularly useful. Yan Diomande then completed his €125m move to Real Madrid, removing last season’s 23-goal-contribution centerpiece from an attack that already looked rather unfinished. Little wonder that the first few weeks involved plenty of moving parts.

The opening test against VSG Altglienicke began in a 4-2-3-1 before Demichelis changed the midfield geometry after barely half an hour. Ezechiel Banzuzi dropped into the single-six role, with Brajan Gruda and Tidiam Gomis working ahead of him as eights. Gruda had already converted a Gomis assist before Leipzig lost momentum and allowed the Regionalliga side to equalize after mistakes from Castello Lukeba and Péter Gulácsi. Johan Bakayoko eventually headed in the 2-1 winner. The experimentation continued across 120 minutes against Ingolstadt. Gruda forced the only goal with an excellent run along the byline, Baku and Bakayoko combined well down the right and Ouédraogo immediately demonstrated his tactical usefulness following his post-World Cup return. The 1-0 scoreline nevertheless flattered Leipzig. Territorial superiority created too few chances and Ingolstadt missed several excellent opportunities late.

The pieces fit together considerably better against Verl in a 4-0 win. Ouédraogo was comfortably Leipzig’s best player during the opening hour. He struck the post, narrowly missed another opportunity and seemed to provide exactly the kind of vertical connection Demichelis wanted. Leipzig created much more than against Ingolstadt, even if the finishing remained adventurous enough that Lukas Klostermann eventually had to break the deadlock from a corner. The second hour provided the clearest midfield blueprint of the summer. Nicolas Seiwald, finally back from World Cup leave, occupied the fixed-six position and allowed Banzuzi and Gruda to advance. Gruda created Baku’s second, Banzuzi scored the third and Conrad Harder won and converted a late penalty. Earlier tests had required Banzuzi, Klostermann and others to improvise at the base of midfield. Seiwald’s return made the geometry considerably less complicated.

Then came Leeds. Leipzig arrived directly from a heavy training camp in Saalfelden and certainly looked like it, but tired legs alone could not explain how little was produced during a 0-2 defeat over 120 minutes. Rômulo became isolated. The midfield struggled to connect with the attack and almost all of Leipzig’s early efforts came from distance. Ouédraogo’s absence was particularly obvious. More concerning was what happened when Leeds bypassed Leipzig’s compact central block. Benjamin Henrichs and Max Finkgräfe were repeatedly exposed as the Premier League side attacked quickly into the channels, with the opener arriving from precisely such a sequence. Leipzig improved after Seiwald and Gruda restored a more functional central axis, but the larger warning remained.

The Telekom Cup Generalprobe against Bayern finally offered something closer to Demichelis’ intended competitive side. Experiments were largely shelved. Maarten Vandevoordt started behind Baku, Willi Orbán, Lukeba and David Raum, with Seiwald anchoring midfield and Banzuzi again trusted from the outset. Leipzig actually began slightly better before Luis Díaz punished a failed clearance for Bayern’s opener. Banzuzi narrowly missed from a Baku delivery shortly before halftime, but the real encouragement arrived after the restart. Bakayoko entered and immediately upped the temperature of the match.

Manuel Neuer denied him after 46 minutes, the post intervened four minutes later and another major chance followed almost immediately. In the 52nd minute, Finkgräfe’s cross reached Gruda, who struck an excellent dropkick into the far corner for a deserved equalizer. Four dangerous attacks in roughly six minutes against Bayern represented Leipzig’s best sustained attacking spell of the entire summer. The problem was how quickly it vanished. Only five minutes after equalizing, Leipzig allowed Aleksandar Pavlović to release Nathaniel Brown through the structure for the 2-1.

The subsequent wave of substitutions killed most of RB’s attacking rhythm before Jamal Musiala’s deflected finish completed the 3-1 scoreline. The result was hardly disastrous, particularly compared with the 0-6 league humiliation at the Allianz Arena one year earlier, and Demichelis was pleased with several aspects of the performance. Leipzig looked especially good for six minutes. The remaining question is how often Demichelis can make those six minutes resemble ninety.

Winners from camp, RB Leipzig

Brajan Gruda, AM/RW

The easiest name to begin with is Gruda, largely because Demichelis spent five weeks trying him in enough places that it became increasingly difficult to imagine an XI without him. The 22-year-old scored against Altglienicke, forced the decisive own-goal against Ingolstadt, assisted Ridle Baku’s goal against Verl and remained one of the few players capable of injecting some attacking life into the difficult Leeds test. He then saved one of his best contributions for the Bayern Generalprobe, converting Max Finkgräfe’s cross with an excellent dropkick for the equalizer. Gruda operated as an eight, ten and wide attacker throughout camp without looking particularly misplaced anywhere. Another winger arriving could push him centrally; no such signing could leave him on the right. Either way, Demichelis appears to have reached the rather useful conclusion that Gruda should be somewhere.

That trust did not materialize from nowhere. After three goals and three assists in just 11 Bundesliga appearances during his initial half-season loan, Leipzig brought Gruda back from Brighton on another loan containing a reported €30m purchase option. Demichelis was already praising the Germany U21 international early in preparation as precisely the type of player required to maintain quality possession, while Gruda himself rather charmingly revealed that he had kept his Leipzig apartment because he already knew where he wanted to be. The rest of the summer merely strengthened the case. At a club still attempting to replace Diomande’s attacking output, Gruda has become something more useful than insurance: a footballer capable of helping Demichelis preserve possession, accelerate attacks and solve several positional problems without requiring the coach to decide exactly what position he is.

Ezechiel Banzuzi, CM

Banzuzi made the largest jump in actual hierarchy. The Dutchman arrived for €16m last summer and accumulated 24 Bundesliga appearances, but only two starts. As the author noted in last year’s RB Leipzig preview, Banzuzi initially looked more like an intriguing developmental piece than someone ready to command a regular midfield role. This preparation changed that rather quickly. He began by filling in as the positional six before Nicolas Seiwald’s return released him into the more adventurous eight position, where his 1.91-metre frame, ball-carrying and ability to attack space became considerably more useful. Banzuzi scored against Verl, impressed again during the Bayern Generalprobe and increasingly looked like one of the players most naturally suited to Demichelis’ desire for power and verticality through midfield.

Circumstances undoubtedly helped. Christoph Baumgartner’s injury, Xaver Schlager’s departure and Rocco Reitz’s delayed return from illness all opened space. Banzuzi nevertheless did considerably more than merely stand in it. Kicker already considered him one of the young players pushing hardest for a second-year breakthrough before the Pokal opener, and the subsequent evidence we’ll examine below only strengthened the case. A player who entered summer looking like useful depth now appears poised to begin the Bundesliga season in the XI. Reitz will eventually provide serious competition. For the moment, however, Banzuzi has earned the rather more pleasant problem of being the man somebody else has to displace.

Johan Bakayoko, RW

The more dramatic rehabilitation belongs to Bakayoko. His first Leipzig campaign began encouragingly before Yan Diomande accelerated past him in the hierarchy and reduced the Belgian largely to substitute work during the Rückrunde. Conveniently enough, the man who displaced him is now in Madrid. Bakayoko responded to the vacancy with his best Leipzig preparation to date. He headed home the winner against Altglienicke and later struck the crossbar, remained consistently lively thereafter and saved his most persuasive argument for Bayern. Introduced at halftime, he forced Manuel Neuer into a save after 46 minutes, struck the post four minutes later and threatened again almost immediately before Gruda finally converted Leipzig’s pressure. The club still wants another high-level winger, so nobody should confuse a successful pre-season with a restored automatic starting place. It does, however, mean that the €18m signing who looked increasingly peripheral six months ago once again resembles a serious Bundesliga option.

Tidiam Gomis, AM/LW

Gomis deserves a slightly more qualified place on the list. The 20-year-old assisted Gruda against Altglienicke, handled an advanced midfield assignment during the early experimentation and, most importantly, survived long enough in Demichelis’ thinking to start against Bayern when the coach had largely dispensed with experiments. Gomis even registered Leipzig’s first attempt of the match. The broader squad picture still suggests that Leipzig do not want to depend upon him to replace Diomande, while the continuing search for another winger makes the hierarchy clear enough. That scarcely diminishes what Gomis accomplished. He began summer as a developmental piece and finished it close enough to the senior group that Demichelis trusted him in the most serious rehearsal.

Ridle Baku, RB

There was considerably less drama surrounding Baku, which in itself probably qualifies as success. He entered preparation as the favorite at right-back and leaves it looking firmly established there. Baku combined promisingly with Bakayoko against Ingolstadt, scored from Gruda’s delivery against Verl, threatened Bayern shortly before halftime and generally supplied the aggressive width Demichelis wants from his full-backs. Last season’s productive partnership with Diomande is gone, meaning the right side requires reconstruction. Baku himself, however, does not appear to be part of the uncertainty.

Losers from camp, RB Leipzig

Rômulo, CF

Rômulo leaves preparation with the clearest sporting question hanging over him. The Brazilian’s movement, pressing work and willingness to attack space still suit much of what Demichelis wants, but pre-season did little to answer the finishing concerns carried over from last season. He passed up several opportunities against Verl and then looked badly isolated during the 0-2 defeat to Leeds, where Leipzig struggled to connect midfield and attack. After nine Bundesliga goals and six assists last season, but also a league-high 22 missed big chances and a significant underperformance against his xG, this was not really the summer for further ambiguity.

Christopher Nkunku’s return now makes that ambiguity considerably more uncomfortable. The Frenchman is not a conventional centre-forward replacement and can operate across several attacking positions, but his arrival gives Demichelis another high-level option capable of occupying central spaces, combining between the lines and reshaping the entire front three. Rômulo may still begin the season as Leipzig’s nominal nine, particularly while Nkunku settles back in, but the hierarchy no longer looks remotely protected. Last summer he had a pathway toward making the position his own. This time, he enters competitive football knowing that one of the Bundesliga’s most accomplished returning attackers has just walked directly into the room.

Benjamin Henrichs, RB/LB

Henrichs entered camp with versatility on his side, but little else moved in his favor. Ridle Baku increasingly established himself as the clear first-choice right-back, while Henrichs’ opportunity against Leeds produced one of the less flattering defensive sequences of the summer. Leipzig’s aggressive positioning repeatedly left space outside the compact central block, and Henrichs was among those exposed when Leeds attacked quickly into the channels. His ability to cover several positions should continue to make him useful across three competitions, but the summer did little to strengthen his argument for a regular starting role.

Rocco Reitz, CM

This one requires the customary injury-related asterisk. Reitz did nothing wrong on the pitch because, for most of camp, he could not get onto it. A serious infection wiped out almost the entire preparation for Leipzig’s €20m-plus midfield signing and delayed his debut until the second half of the Bayern Generalprobe. The club invested too much and tied him down for too long to regard him as anything resembling a failed transfer, but pre-season hierarchy waits for nobody. While Reitz recovered, Ezechiel Banzuzi accumulated five weeks of tactical instruction, moved through several midfield roles and played himself toward the opening XI. Reitz remains a major part of Leipzig’s plans. He simply begins the season having missed the period in which those plans were supposed to become habits.

Assan Ouédraogo, CM

Ouédraogo lands here for reasons almost entirely beyond his control. Whenever he actually played, the 20-year-old looked like one of Leipzig’s best midfielders. He returned after the World Cup, immediately demonstrated how comfortably he could move between six and eight spaces and was arguably Leipzig’s standout player against Verl, linking buildup and attack while repeatedly carrying the ball forward. Then came the shoulder injury. The subsequent Leeds match offered a fairly persuasive illustration of what Leipzig missed without him. Ouédraogo therefore lost neither status nor tactical credibility during camp. Quite the opposite. He merely lost valuable time at precisely the moment when he appeared ready to establish both.

Christoph Baumgartner, AM/CM

Baumgartner never received the opportunity to defend his place in the hierarchy. After his best Bundesliga season to date, the Austrian missed the World Cup because of a thigh injury, underwent a procedure and remained unavailable throughout preparation. He is not expected back until around the first international break. Demichelis still appears to view him as an excellent fit for one of the advanced midfield positions, but his absence opened space for Banzuzi, Gruda and others to make their cases. Like Ouédraogo and Reitz, Baumgartner is therefore a loser from camp in terms of lost time rather than lost footballing standing.

Tactical scout, RB Leipzig

The first competitive evidence could hardly have been more obliging. After spending the summer gradually dragging Leipzig toward the preferred 4-3-3 (a 4-1-4-1 pressing structure off the ball), Demichelis arrived in Trier and resisted the temptation to suddenly become clever. Only one change was made from the XI used for the Bayern Generalprobe, with Johan Bakayoko replacing Andrija Maksimović. Nicolas Seiwald remained the positional six. Ezechiel Banzuzi and Brajan Gruda operated ahead of him. David Raum and Ridle Baku were the full-backs, while Antonio Nusa and Bakayoko supplied the width around Tidiam Gomis.

In other words, the experiments had ended.

This was the team.

Lineup–RBL (DFB-Pokal)

The opening goal provided an almost suspiciously neat diagram of the entire summer’s work. Nusa received on the left and slipped Banzuzi forward through the half-space. The advanced eight continued beyond him, collected the pass and squared for Gruda arriving centrally to finish. Winger outside. Eight advancing inside. Another midfielder attacking the penalty area. One could probably have paused the footage, drawn three arrows and saved several hundred words of this preview. Four minutes later, Gruda supplied Orbán for the second after Leipzig kept a short corner alive.

The important point was not merely that the goals arrived early. Leipzig spent the opening phase repeatedly preventing Trier from escaping. Nusa and Bakayoko both generated chances from their wide starting positions, Gruda carried the ball aggressively through the inside channels and the Regionalliga hosts were pushed so deep that Vandevoordt spent much of the first half performing the goalkeeper’s traditional duties of standing around and trying not to become cold.

Bakayoko’s work deserves particular mention. His strong finish to camp had been built mostly upon what he did with the ball. In Trier, there was evidence of why Demichelis trusted him without it as well. The Belgian repeatedly tracked back to support Baku on the right and worked diligently whenever possession changed hands. That might sound like the least glamorous possible argument for an €18m winger, but it matters enormously within a system dependent upon immediate pressure after turnovers.

Against Leeds, opponents escaping the first pressure had found enormous spaces around the advanced full-backs. Bayern offered another version of the same warning. Trier lacked anything resembling the same individual quality, but they did eventually find some transition opportunities. Encouragingly, Leipzig initially dealt with them much better. Recovery runs were sharp, counters were stopped before reaching the penalty area, and the defensive line generally succeeded in compressing the space behind the first wave.

Trier failed to punish a few lapses, most notably when Tim Sausen found himself completely free shortly before halftime and volleyed over. Baku’s deflected effort nevertheless produced the 3-0 almost immediately afterwards. Lording over a commanding lead, Leipzig presided over a much quieter second half. Demichelis’ team continued controlling possession, but the relentless first-half purpose disappeared for a spell.

Trier competed better in the duels, Leipzig circulated without penetrating as consistently and the match briefly began resembling what one might reasonably expect from a Bundesliga side protecting a comfortable Pokal lead against Regionalliga opposition. Possession remained secure. Verticality became considerably less urgent.

That matters because Demichelis does not merely want control. He wants control with violence. The quadruple substitution after an hour restored some of it. Conrad Harder replaced Bakayoko, Rocco Reitz came on for Gomis, Max Finkgräfe relieved Raum and Benjamin Henrichs replaced Baku. The resulting redistribution offered perhaps the most interesting tactical detail of the second half.

Gruda moved to the right wing.

Reitz took the right half-space.

Lineup–RBL (64th minute)

So much for finally assigning Gruda a position.

The change nevertheless reinforced something preparation had already suggested. Demichelis does not appear especially concerned with where Gruda’s name sits on the teamsheet. He wants the footballer somewhere useful. The 22-year-old had begun the match as an eight, scored after two minutes, assisted after six and later shifted onto the wing without requiring Leipzig to abandon the broader 4-3-3 architecture.

Reitz’s introduction supplied another important piece of evidence. Illness had robbed the €20m-plus newcomer of almost the entire preparation, leaving Banzuzi to race ahead in the hierarchy. Demichelis did not ease Reitz back into competitive football as Seiwald’s deputy six. He placed him in the advanced right-half-space role.

Thirteen minutes later, Reitz attacked from the right and drilled a low ball into the centre for Harder, who separated from his marker and finished the fourth. Again, the shape was doing precisely what Demichelis had spent summer teaching it to do. The eights were expected to advance. The wide players could move inside or outside depending upon the occupation around them. Harder’s goal was not especially elaborate. That was rather the point.

Arthur Vermeeren eventually replaced Seiwald at the base, suggesting a straightforward handover of the positional-six assignment rather than another structural alteration. Nusa and Banzuzi then completed the scoring in stoppage time, with the latter appropriately adding a goal to the assist with which his afternoon had begun.

The individual hierarchy established during camp therefore survived its first competitive examination remarkably well. Gruda was everywhere. Banzuzi started as an eight and produced a goal and assist. Bakayoko retained the right-wing position after his excellent Bayern cameo and contributed energetically on both sides of the ball.

Gomis started centrally and struck the post. Harder came from the bench and scored. Reitz finally entered the competitive picture and immediately created a goal. A Regionalliga opponent naturally cannot tell us whether the counterpress will survive Bundesliga technicians, whether Raum and Baku can remain as aggressive against elite transition sides, or whether the current attack contains sufficient quality to replace 23 Diomande goal contributions.

It did, however, establish something rather important. The football seen during preparation was not merely laboratory work.

Demichelis took the same positional six, the same adventurous eights, the same aggressive full-backs and the same immediate transition pressure into his first competitive match. For long stretches, it worked exactly as designed. Even when the personnel changed, the occupation of the spaces remained recognizable.

Pre-season gave Leipzig six excellent minutes against Bayern.

Trier gave them considerably more.

We’ll now see how many they can produce in the Bundesliga.

GGFN | Peter Weis