Marked for Philipp Lainer
From our football correspondent
Steady
Loan watch3 Apr 2028
21 clean sheets on loan for Salko Hamzić
29 appearances at Fehervar and the goals have stopped going in. Red Bull Salzburg lent out a goalkeeper and are watching somebody else’s season get better every week.
Squad3 Apr 2028
Oliver Skipp and a teammate said things this week that will take longer than a week to unsay. It was not about football, and both of them play on Saturday.
Squad3 Apr 2028
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Robert Berić commits to Red Bull Salzburg for another 2 years.
Squad3 Apr 2028
Four or five weekends of consistency, measured against everybody else in the division. A quieter compliment than an award and a more reliable one.
The dugout3 Apr 2028
It is never announced and it is entirely visible: the biggest afternoons of the season keep containing him. A press box works this out long before anybody at the club confirms a word of it.
Squad3 Apr 2028
Red Bull Salzburg will explain it as a decision about the team, and it may well be one. A dressing room has never once read it that way.
Loan watch3 Apr 2028
28 appearances away from home and 3 goals to show for them. Every one of them makes next summer's conversation a little more expensive.
The dugout3 Apr 2028
“It had gone on long enough. I would rather have it out than leave it sitting there.” Ten minutes behind a closed door at Red Bull Salzburg, and both men came out saying it was fine.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Steady
The dugout6 Mar 2028
“I remember the meeting. I remember exactly what was promised in it.” Red Bull Salzburg may remember it differently, which is precisely the problem.
Squad6 Mar 2028
Some afternoons a goalkeeper is the team. 7 saves, several of them the sort nobody expects to see stopped, and a scoreline that flatters everybody in front of him.
Loan watch6 Mar 2028
21 shut-outs in 29 games. A goalkeeper’s loan is judged on the afternoons when nothing happened at all, and Salko Hamzić has been having a lot of them.
Squad6 Mar 2028
Haris Tabaković and a teammate went at it, and not about football. Training grounds are small places and a long season makes them smaller.
Squad6 Mar 2028
Words at Red Bull Salzburg training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Gaoussou Diakité is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad6 Mar 2028
Robert Berić is not the player he was
It happens to all of them and it is still the hardest paragraph a local paper has to write. 37 years old, 3 points down on where he was, and a body that has started charging interest on a career.
Market6 Mar 2028
“We are a long way apart, and pretending otherwise helps nobody.” Neither side is close, and the calendar is not on the club's side.
Loan watch6 Mar 2028
“I am grateful for the games, but I did not become a footballer to be somebody else's spare part.” He wants to be at Red Bull Salzburg, and 0 appearances in 36 say he has earned the hearing.
The dugout6 Mar 2028
Leandro Morgalla has become a man the manager trusts
Nobody at Red Bull Salzburg will say this on the record and the team sheets have been saying it for weeks. There is a small group in every squad who get picked when the fixture is difficult, and he has joined it.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Transfer targets24 Jan 2028
A medical, a signature, a shirt held up in front of a sponsor’s board. Red Bull Salzburg have done the hard part with Leicester City, and the part that remains is the part supporters actually see.
Match24 Jan 2028
41 points on the board and a place in the leading group. Nobody at the ground is saying the word out loud yet.
Market24 Jan 2028
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Transfer targets24 Jan 2028
Kawasaki Frontale wanted more than $12.3M and the board would not go there. Walked away, for now, which in a transfer window means until somebody blinks.
Market24 Jan 2028
The offer from Skonto for Johannes Moser was heard out and sent back the same day. First bids are rarely meant to succeed; they are meant to find out how loudly the door closes.
Squad24 Jan 2028
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Red Bull Salzburg this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Loan watch24 Jan 2028
Salko Hamzić’s loan is measured in nothing happening
16 clean sheets from 23 appearances at Fehervar. That is the whole of a goalkeeper’s job done properly, and it is being done a long way from the club that owns him.
Transfer targets24 Jan 2028
Red Bull Salzburg asked and Amstetten said no without discussing a figure. It is the least ambiguous answer in football and the one clubs most often come back to test.
Squad24 Jan 2028
Words at Red Bull Salzburg training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Jakob Zangerl is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.