Off to Paris!
Following yet another strong season in the Bundesliga, Champions League, and DFB Pokal, along with a strong presence in the EURO 2024 with 11 Red Bulls, it is time for one more elite summer tournament where RB Leipzig is present.
Paris will be hosting the 2024 Summer Olympic Games and our own Castello Jr. will be representing France, the home nation, during the 16-day long international tournament. Ilaix Moriba is the second RB Leipzig player to take part in the Olympics, with Guinea.
The Olympics in Paris, the football across France
Even though the Olympics are to be held in Paris, football will be played across seven stadiums in an equal amount of cities in France:
- Paris: Parc des Princes
- Bordeaux: Stade de Bordeaux
- Nantes: Stade de la Beaujoire
- Lyon: Stade de Lyon
- Marseille: Stade de Marseille
- Nice: Stade de Nice
- Saint-Etienne: Stade Geoffroy Guichard
A Red Bull match-up in the group stage
The Olympic Football will take place between July 24 and August 9 and will have a total of 16 national teams taking part:
Group A
- France (Castello Jr.)
- USA
- Guinea (Ilaix Moriba)
- New Zealand
Fixtures
- France – USA | 3:0 ➙ Castello Jr. played the 90 minutes of the match.
- Guinea – New Zealand 1:2 ➙ Ilaix Moriba played for 74 minutes.
- Saturday July 27 (kick-off 9:00PM CEST)
France – Guinea
- Tuesday, July 30 (kick-off 7:00PM CEST)
New Zealand – France
USA – Guinea
The other groups at a glance
Group B
- Argentina
- Morocco
- Iraq
- Ukraine
Group C
- Spain
- Uzbekistan
- Egypt
- Dominican Republic
Group D
- Japan
- Paraguay
- Mali
- Israel
The top two nations in each group progress to the first knockout phase, the quarter-finals. The winners of that match-up will move on to the semi-finals, where the winner will play for the final and the defeated sides will have a third-place play-off.
Who gets selected for the Olympic Teams
Unlike FIFA-organized tournaments, the Olympic Committee sets an age limit for the players who can be nominated for the Olympic Football Tournaments.
Squads called up cannot consist of more than 18 players and four alternates, or reserve players, who can fill in for a teammate who must miss the tournament’s remainder.
Players must be born after January 1, 2001, to be eligible for the team, except for three designated players who can be over 23 years of age.
The Red Bulls’ Performance
Castello Jr. and Ilaix Moriba are not the first RB Leipzig players to have been called up for Olympic glory. He They are in fact the fifth and sixth Red Bulls to have made the final cut to represent their country in the past three editions of the Summer Olympic Games.
Rio de Janeiro 2016
Germany
- Lukas Klostermann
- Davie Selke
Our first-ever Olympians were pivotal in what has been Germany’s highest-ever achievement in Olympic football: A silver medal. They remained undefeated throughout the entire tournament, forcing penalty kicks with locals Brazil, who took the gold after a 5-4 shootout.
Davie Selke scored twice in the tournament, while Lukas Klostermann found the back of the net on one occasion.
Tokyo 2020 (2021)
Spain
- Dani Olmo
Recent EURO 2024 Topscorer and winner, Dani Olmo, finished atop his group with Spain in a group that had as rivals Argentina, Egypt, and Australia. “El Mago” himself wrote his name in the scoreboards once, with the 1-1 against Ivory Coast in the quarter-finals.
La Roja would go all the way to the final, where Brazil secured the gold for the second time in a row at extra time.
Germany
- Benjamin Henrichs
Germany’s luck during the 2020 Olympics was short-lived. A win against Saudi Arabia, a draw against the Ivory Coast, and a 4-2 defeat against eventual winners Brazil, made the Tokyo Olympics one where Benjamin Henrichs’ time in Japan wasn’t as long as it could have been.
Future and Former RB Leipzig Olympians
While still not Red Bulls, or having finished their tenure at the Red Bull Arena, three other footballers whose past is associated with RB Leipzig also saw action during the Summer Olympic Games with their respective national teams:
Rio de Janeiro 2016
South Korea
- Hee-chan Hwang (at RB Salzburg at the time)
Tokyo 2020 (2021)
Germany
- David Raum(Greuther Fürth)
Brazil
- Matheus Cunha (Hertha BSC)
Paris 2024
Guinea
- Naby Keita (Werder Bremen)