RB Leipzig Goes to the Olympics!

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25 July 2024, 18:15 yayınlandı

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: