"Die Welt ist seit Donnerstag nicht mehr dieselbe." | Oliver Mintzlaff, RB Leipzig CEO

Thank you very much. Hello everyone. Since last Thursday, the world is no longer the same. We are all deeply shocked by the events of this war, by the images reaching us from Ukraine, and naturally this has brought great emotional distress to every single one of us. We've also noticed that there has been a lot of discussion about how RB Leipzig is conducting itself. That's why we wanted to recapitulate and explain what we were thinking, how we acted, and why we acted that way.

When the terrible news reached us, I was in San Sebastián. We were one of the first clubs to communicate our condolences on our channels. Then we had the match where we qualified, flew back during the draw, and then came the draw: Spartak Moscow. Naturally, we discussed it internally and talked about how to handle it. Can we even play against that team? Can we not play? Should we even take the field now that war has broken out? Is a boycott the right thing? These were topics reflecting our internal feelings and thoughts.

Is a boycott the right approach? Sport should unite. Should we take the field or not? Should we boycott? Out of this conglomerate of very many thoughts that we probably couldn't properly sort at the time — and who can in such a situation that isn't just distressing and burdensome, but also entirely new, with war more or less happening in Europe on our doorstep — then that evening or night, I reached out to Aleksander Čeferin, with whom I have a very good relationship and whom I greatly respect, the UEFA president.

I shared our thoughts and asked for his perspective on these matters. We then had extensive conversations, exchanged many messages, and ultimately decided that UEFA — and this was also Aleksander Čeferin's wish, who said he understood everything and that only one decision could be made, but UEFA wanted to make it as the organizer of the competition — so that's what we agreed to.

I then informed the team here and we had an intensive exchange. I also contacted Donata Hopfen from the DFL, and we were in close contact over the weekend. We arrived at the conclusion that UEFA is the organizer and that UEFA should make this decision. There was really only one possible decision, and we were aware of that by Saturday. We urged — I had intensive contact again on Sunday — that a decision be made on Sunday. UEFA then informed us that they would assemble on Monday, with the Executive Committee meeting.

We didn't fall into further activism from our side; we said, okay, we are playing in this competition, we trust UEFA, we clearly expressed our position, and we held to what I discussed with Aleksander Čeferin. We believe that the negotiations conducted in the background, which naturally we didn't post about every five minutes on our channels, have now led to the right result. In our view, this was the right process. It was important to me to communicate this to you in its full breadth and chronology.

I just tried to explain that. It's not that — and you know us as a club — it's not that we shy away from difficult situations. You certainly can't accuse us of not being a club that stands up in difficult situations. And this is a difficult situation. Nevertheless, I just tried to reflect the entire chronology, our internal process, and our clear approach, which we coordinated very closely with both the DFL and, logically, UEFA. We agreed on how UEFA should cancel it, and in retrospect, I see that as the right process.

This has nothing to do with us not having sympathy. It has nothing to do with us not being capable of saying we won't play. Rather, we are part of this competition. We trust the people involved and didn't wait for someone to make a decision for us. We exerted considerable pressure in the background, recognizing that given the overall situation, playing makes no sense. We naturally issued a statement right after the draw, which we probably wouldn't issue today, but re-evaluating things isn't fickle — the German government does it, the EU does it. There's no patent recipe.

On that Friday evening, we felt we couldn't continue like this. We then contacted UEFA, and for us that was the right path. I also want to say —

From conversations with employees — not just the players — I can say that many colleagues reached out asking what they could do, that they wanted to get involved, and what plans the club still has. It's the same with the players. We informed them through media contacts, shared the information we had, and you can feel a great sense of deep concern. It doesn't matter whether it's a player, a marketing employee, or an editor — we are all affected and deeply distressed by these terrible events and this terrible war. We all wish for nothing more than a solution at the negotiating table and a return to peace.

I don't think you can make a distinction between Herr Meier and Herr Müller. This affects everyone, as we can see globally. Our sympathy is just as great as it is everywhere else. Before coming here to the press conference, I spoke with Donata Hopfen. The league is planning many measures, but they're not yet finalized — it's more of a brainstorming process about what can be done, where support can be given, where help can be offered.

We agreed to speak again today and exchange ideas. There will be expressions of sympathy not just from RB Leipzig but from every Bundesliga club at the matches — that's the bare minimum. Then it's about what actions can be taken, and there will certainly be league-wide initiatives that we will also support.

Let me reiterate, I described how I respect Aleksander Čeferin as a very intelligent, very likable, and very wise man. I've shared many details with him. The decision was ultimately made by the Executive Committee — not by Čeferin alone — and they met yesterday at 6 PM to make it official. What I told you is that we spoke with Čeferin and said under these circumstances we cannot play. We offered UEFA support, and if that hadn't been the case, we would have made our own decision. We had a very proper and clean process with UEFA, which has now concluded with the correct decision that the match will not take place.

Your second question — naturally the decision only became official last night, and now we need to consider what we can do. As I described, we have employees with many ideas asking how they can help personally. I think everyone should first start with themselves — it's easy to say the company must do X or Y, but now every individual is called upon. We're doing that here, and our employees are doing that too, and I welcome that. As a club, we'll naturally think about it too.

I'm sitting here today — having just received the accusation of only now speaking up — to clarify once more what the process was, what we were thinking, and we're not ashamed of that. Some comments feel rather populist to me. We tried to communicate with complete openness and transparency about the thoughts of the coaches, players, sport directors, management, and colleagues — how they deal with such a situation, re-evaluated it quickly, and are now satisfied with the right decision.

The next step is to think about what we can do jointly with the league. I believe the solidarity the league has shown in recent years is now a very important aspect. I welcome Donata Hopfen's initiative to consider what we can do jointly as a league, and you can count on us being actively and intensively involved in that.

I can handle any criticism. We've had other issues that were far less severe. In terms of coaching changes this year, it's been a very eventful year — but compared to what we see now, we can calmly set all of that aside. What truly matters is that there is war, and that is terrible. All the previous unrest at this club can now be put to rest. We've always faced criticism, and that's completely fine — thankfully, in this country we have freedom of expression and many opinions. But sometimes, if I may comment, things are shot off quickly. And my question is always: what is the aim? To reinforce the cliché that Red Bull is just a construct that only wants to make money and push its brand? I can only shake my head at that. All of this has affected us deeply and occupied us enormously. I'm also emotionally affected.

When you read so much rubbish, you sometimes wonder how sick that actually is. And the second point was — Stefan, you'll have to remind me of the second point. The deep concern is naturally whether in your initial conversations with the DFL there were hints suggesting it would be better if the initiative came from us, that we boycott, and the DFL would stand behind us.

Of course we discussed it with the DFL, and the DFL said this is the completely right path — go with the UEFA team, with Aleksander Čeferin. That felt right to us and still feels right in retrospect. Otherwise I could sit here and say it was wrong what we did, but we don't see it that way. We also considered — and I don't find it bad at all to say — even the coach asked whether a boycott is the right approach. Those were thoughts we had. We didn't deal with the war every day and all its implications. We are sportspeople. We have social responsibility as a football club, and I believe we take that very seriously here in Leipzig in many areas.

But this is ultimately about sport, and the idea that sport unites — with a boycott, you're hitting the wrong people. We don't need to be ashamed that those were thoughts we had initially. We then revised them, and I'm not sitting here to apologize for that. Those were thoughts we had, and they were perfectly fine at that point. We then re-evaluated them, and with this new assessment, we arrived at the conclusion on Friday: this can't work like this. We then took that path, and for us it was the right path.

Now we want to leave this behind us and focus on the upcoming matches. There's another topic — everywhere there's criticism. I've been asking myself which criticism. If I were a journalist, I would have asked: why are football matches still taking place at all right now when there's war? That would be the question. Why do cities and countries — those are the questions. I haven't read those. Perhaps we should all ask ourselves whether in the current situation we can even play football matches.

At the match against Bochum there was a great atmosphere, and you didn't feel that the world just stopped and completely changed. There's no right or wrong here. This is a situation we've never dealt with before. All other wars are far away — it's not the only war. We take note of the other 18 or 20 wars when we check the news in the morning and leaf through the Süddeutsche or FAZ. But this one is right on our doorstep, which makes us all much more afraid and much more affected.

But the question of whether RB Leipzig is just after the money — that's not the right question for me. The question we should fundamentally ask is: if we are all so affected, can we play football matches at all? Or do we perhaps need to say we can't play any matches because there's a war? But I haven't seen that question asked of the eleven friends or anywhere else. Thank you very much.