Photo Gallery Leipzig Red Bulls on the Rise
With RB Leipzig, part of the Red Bull soccer franchise, the soft drink maker is hoping to send the eastern German team into the top division of the Bundesliga. When the team appointed Ralf Rangnick, pictured, as its sports director last year, he promised to steward them to victory.
RB Leipzig plays its first match in the third league on July 19. Striker Daniel Frahn, pictured, is one of the players who helped get them there. They made it through the entire season without a single defeat.
During the summer break last year, Leipzig spent more than a million euros on new players. They've been careful to cultivate a cadre of fresh young talent, like Frahn, here seen celebrating a 2011 victory over VfL Wolfsburg at the Red Bull Arena in Leipzig.
Fans in Leipzig celebrate the team's promotion to the third league. Once controversial because of its sponsorship, the team is becoming increasingly established in the city. Many football fans are fed up with the crippling opposition between the two traditional local clubs VfB/Lok and Sachsen/Chemie, which has led to Leipzig being kept out of the Bundesliga for 15 years.
It's clear how badly the city is yearning for high-class football by the more than 7,500 spectators, on average, who attend the regional home games and the more than 30,000 who came out to a recent relegation match against Sportfreunde Lotte, a regional team from North Rhine-Westphalia. Even the mascot has finally been accepted.
The team's benefactor, Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz, wants RB Leipzig to make it into the Bundesliga, but he has said that it shouldn't happen too quickly.
