2026/2027 league phase

Champions League

Club page
Champions League · Club page
RB Leipzig
Head coach: Martín Demichelis · 4-3-3
Rank
21st
Pts
3
P
2
Form
🟡 Average

The essentials at a glance

The summary of this page: estimated level of play, form trend and qualitative verdict. For the details, head to the other tabs.

Editors' ratings
4/10
Attack
7/10
Defence
5/10
Form
5/10
Confidence / mood
Current risk:—

21st with 3 pts from 2 matches: 1 win, 0 draws, 1 defeat.

2 goals scored, 4 conceded.

FC Bayern humiliates RB Leipzig in the top game. After the whistle, Lothar Matthew comments on the discussion about Joshua Kimmich. The record national player chooses clear words.

Welt Sport · 18 Oct 2026 · machine-translated

After the victories against Frankfurt and Eindhoven, RB Leipzig from FC Bayern concedes a rubbing. The bosses are served by whistle – and find clear words. The pressure on coach Demichelis increases again before the game at Real.

Welt Sport · 18 Oct 2026 · machine-translated

In the 6:1 against Leipzig Harry Kane excelled not only as a goal scorer and preparer. It’s stupid that this role is not allowed on Wednesday.

kicker · 18 Oct 2026 · machine-translated

Already appeared much less active than usual on the bench during the success against Leipzig (6-1) this Saturday evening, Vincent Kompany let the sports director of Bayern Munich respond to his place for journalists. Belgian is weakened by a virus in recent days.

L'Équipe · 17 Oct 2026 · machine-translated

How the team has played recently

Match-by-match results, record and rhythm of the current season.

Latest matches
Wvs PSV (H) · 1-0
Lvs Como 1907 (A) · 1-4
WL
2 scored / 4 conceded over 2 matches played
Rest: 5 days since the last match · 1 match played in the last 15 days
Home form
1W - 0D - 0L
Away form
0W - 0D - 1L
Statistics

Computed from this season's scores, every time the page is shown.

Goals scored per match
1.0
Goals conceded per match
2.0
At home
1 scored · 0 conceded in 1 match
Away
1 scored · 4 conceded in 1 match
Over 2.5 goals
1 of 2
Both teams score
1 of 2
Clean sheets
1 of 2
Failed to score
0 of 2
Cumulative points vs league average

Not enough matchdays recorded yet for this curve — history builds up with every standings refresh.

How RB Leipzig play

System, playing identity, and what sets the team apart at both ends of the pitch.

Playing identity
Preferred system
4-3-3
Philosophy
Attacking strengths
Defensive solidity
Pressing
Transitions
Strength
Weakness

The mood around the club, and who is missing

Internal climate, relationship with the supporters, and known absences before the next match.

Mood
Squad confidence
High. The opening 3-0 against Mönchengladbach immediately gave credibility to Martín Demichelis's project; he spoke of a day he “will never forget” while himself pointing to the last fifteen minutes and a lack of control without the ball. The treatment room has thinned out, with only three names listed before the trip to Bremen, and Assan Ouedraogo is back on the pitch. The squad goes into matchday 2 with the pecking order still open, notably in goal between Maarten Vandevoordt and Ørjan Nyland.
Coach / players / board relationship
Marcel Schäfer answered the calls for reinforcements made publicly by Martín Demichelis in August: midfielder Neil El Aynaoui arrived on a paid loan from AS Roma with a €25m purchase option, the sporting director explaining that he “fits our profile and our playing philosophy very well”. In parallel the club trimmed to the last, loaning El Chadaille Bitshiabu to Galatasaray and selling Ayodele Thomas to NEC Nijmegen. No tension between the staff and the board is reported.
Mood with the supporters
The restart produced a powerful image, with Demichelis naming “the supporters' tifo” first among the satisfactions of his debut. That buy-in has yet to be consolidated, though: part of the crowd has not digested the parting with Ole Werner despite Champions League qualification, and the relationship between the board and the fanbase remains a sensitive question. The season's first big European night, with Manchester City and PSV Eindhoven among the home fixtures, will be a test.
Pressure on the head coach
Pressure on Demichelis is low at this stage. He has started with a clear win and a measured message, and he got the reinforcements he asked for. The remit remains clear — European qualification again — but nothing in the sources consulted suggests his position is in question. The trip to Bremen, on Saturday 5 September at 15:30, is his first away test.
Club objectives
A Champions League qualifying place, an objective set publicly by Martín Demichelis in August, and a European league phase to navigate. The draw fell on the hard side: Manchester City, PSV Eindhoven, Shakhtar Donetsk and RC Lens at the Red Bull Arena, Real Madrid, Manchester United, Feyenoord and Como away, between 8 September and 27 January.
Recent internal tensions
No internal conflict reported. The identified friction is outside the dressing room: discontent among part of the support towards the board after Ole Werner's dismissal, and a squad still large that the club kept reducing up to the deadline, with the departures of Bitshiabu, Thomas, Masanka Bungi and Conrad Harder.
Absences
InjuredViggo Gebel — Cruciate ligament rupture: out for around ten months according to LigaInsider.
InjuredChristoph Baumgartner — Torn thigh tendon sustained before the World Cup; he is at the first running sessions, out for around three months.
DoubtfulAssan Ouedraogo — Shoulder injury; back on the training pitch after around four weeks out, with no guarantee of immediate availability.

Before kick-off

What to know before the next match: statistical form, qualitative analysis, and a computed estimate of the 1/X/2 probabilities.

Next match

Real Madrid — RB Leipzig

AwayWednesday 21 October at 21:00Matchday 3
In 3 days. Kick-off time confirmed by the league. Paris time · football-data.org fixtures.

Prediction, odds and form of both teams →

What the press says

No preview found for this fixture. The press mostly covers the big games, and usually the day before.

Prediction
EstimateReal Madrid — RB Leipzig
60 %
1 · Real Madrid
18 %
X · draw
22 %
2 · RB Leipzig
In-house calculation, from this page's standings data alone: 2 matches played by Real Madrid, 2 matches by RB Leipzig. Confidence: low
The calculation rests on only 2 matches per team. Shrinkage deliberately pulls the estimate close to a neutral split: it barely tells the two teams apart.
The formula, in plain words — with this match's figures
  1. League average. 141 goals scored over 68 team-matches played (34 teams taken into account), i.e. μ = 2.07 goal scored per team per match. This is the reference point: everything that follows is expressed relative to it.
  2. Attacking and defensive strengths. Goals scored (or conceded) per match, divided by μ. 1.00 = exactly average; in defence, above 1.00 means “concedes more than average”.
    TeamGoalsRawKept
    Real Madrid — attack6 in 2 matches1.451.11
    Real Madrid — defence4 in 2 matches0.960.99
    RB Leipzig — attack2 in 2 matches0.480.87
    RB Leipzig — defence4 in 2 matches0.960.99
    The “Kept” column is the result of shrinkage towards the mean: weight = P / (P + 6), i.e. 0.25 for Real Madrid and 0.25 for RB Leipzig. The rest of the weight goes to the league average. This is what stops a lone 5-0 from producing an attack at 3.3 times the average — and hence a 95% probability.
  3. Home advantage (γ). Measured on the league itself: 2.47 goal scored on average by the host against 1.68 by the visitor, over the 34 fixtures present in each team's last 5 matches. Raw ratio 1.47; shrunk towards 1 (weight 0.36, on the log of the ratio) then capped at 1.25 → γ = 1.15. Shrinkage goes towards 1, i.e. no advantage at all: while the sample is small, the model does not assert a home advantage it cannot measure.
  4. Venue correction, specific to each team. Drawn from the home/away split: points per match at the venue concerned are compared to points per match over all fixtures, with stronger shrinkage (weight = P / (P + 8)) and a bound of ±12%.
    Real Madrid at home: 3.00 pts/match versus 3.00 overall over 1 match → ×1.000
    RB Leipzig away: 0.00 pts/match versus 1.50 overall over 1 match → ×0.889
  5. Expected goals. One side's attack is set against the other's defence. γ applies to the host only: applying it the other way round too would count the home advantage twice.
    λReal Madrid = 2.07 × 1.11 × 0.99 × 1.15 × 1.000 = 2.63
    λRB Leipzig = 2.07 × 0.87 × 0.99 × 0.889 = 1.59
  6. Poisson grid. Probability of every exact score from 0-0 to 8-8, assuming the two goal totals are independent, then adding up the cells: home win 59.9%, draw 18.0%, away win 22.1% — displayed rounded to whole numbers so that they add up to exactly 100. Most likely exact score in the grid: 2-1 (only 8.1%, which says enough about how unpredictable an exact score is).
Limits of this model — they are not anecdotal.
  • It only knows goals and a venue. Neither absences, suspensions, line-ups, fatigue, stakes, weather nor club context enter the calculation — while the other tabs of this page show that they matter.
  • The assumption that the two goal totals are independent is false in reality: it slightly underestimates tight scores, hence the draw.
  • γ is measured over a rolling window (each team's last 5 matches), not over the whole season.
  • The shrinkage constants (6, 60, 8) and the bounds are choices, not measurements. They were tuned to be cautious early in the season; they were not calibrated on a results history, as none is available here.
  • No after-the-fact evaluation has been made: at this stage, nobody knows whether this model is better or worse calibrated than another.
What other sources say
No external source has been collected for this match. That is the normal state: readings are taken by hand, and an empty box is better than an unverified figure.
This block shows probability estimates, not predictions, and carries no advisory value. The in-house estimate is the result of a formula applied to a small sample; the figures from external sources are reproduced as they were collected, without their method having been verified.

The full squad

The professional squad by position, captain marked with an armband.

Squad not documented for this team yet.

What has been said recently

Chronological feed of verified information about the club.

rss18 Oct 2026
Kane's special role: How Bayern Leipzig dismantled
Source: kicker
rss17 Oct 2026
" It is really not in shape »: weakened by a virus, Vincent Kompany wanted to be present on the bench of Bayern Munich against Leipzig
Source: L'Équipe
rss17 Oct 2026
Bayern plays Leipzig from the mat (6-1), Dortmund spill points at Union Berlin
Source: NOS Voetbal
rss17 Oct 2026
Bayern responds to critics and applies a sip to RB Leipzig
Source: zerozero
rss17 Oct 2026
Bayern Munich crushes RB Leipzig in Bundesliga before facing Arsenal in Champions League
Source: L'Équipe
rss17 Oct 2026
Bavaria shoots itself against Leipzig the frustration of the soul
Source: Sportschau
Transfers2 Sep 2026
The financial terms of Neil El Aynaoui's arrival are known: the 25-year-old Moroccan midfielder is on a one-year loan from AS Roma for €4m, with Leipzig holding a purchase option set at €25m next summer. A Morocco international with 22 caps, he played at the 2026 Africa Cup of Nations and the World Cup, starting every match. Marcel Schäfer justified the choice: “In Neil El Aynaoui we are getting a player who fits our profile and our playing philosophy very well.” The club had been looking for a midfielder after the absences of Baumgartner and Ouedraogo and Xaver Schlager's move to Nottingham Forest.
Source: Get German Football News
Transfers2 Sep 2026
El Chadaille Bitshiabu has been loaned to Galatasaray, the deal including a purchase option valued at between €25m and €30m. The 21-year-old centre-back, signed from Paris Saint-Germain in summer 2023, was looking for playing time after a 2025-26 season of eleven Bundesliga appearances, eight of them starts. The situation had previously gone down several routes, with a loan to Lens falling through and a Salzburg option ruled out.
Source: Bulinews
Club1 Sep 2026
The club also continued to move its young players on: Joyeux Masanka Bungi has been loaned to VfB Stuttgart's reserve side, who play at U21 level, to find the playing time he would not have got in Saxony.
Source: LigaInsider
Transfers1 Sep 2026
The club has confirmed the signing of forward Marc Guiu from Chelsea, under contract until 2031, as a direct response to Conrad Harder's departure.
Source: Fussballdaten
Transfers1 Sep 2026
The summer window closed on ambitious attacking recruitment: alongside Marc Guiu, Leipzig registered the loans of Christopher Nkunku, back from AC Milan, and Neil El Aynaoui from Roma, as well as the arrival of Rocco Reitz. Loïs Openda left for Juventus and Xaver Schlager for Nottingham.
Source: Bundesliga.com
Injury31 Aug 2026
Leipzig's injury list is down to three names before the trip to Bremen. Viggo Gebel remains out after around ten months following a cruciate ligament rupture. Christoph Baumgartner is at the first running sessions, and Assan Ouedraogo is back on the training pitch. For matchday 2, the projected line-up puts Maarten Vandevoordt in goal, pairs Rocco Reitz with Nicolas Seiwald in midfield and starts Brajan Gruda and Antonio Nusa on the flanks.
Source: LigaInsider
Head coach29 Aug 2026
Martín Demichelis did not hide his emotion after his winning Bundesliga debut: “I will never forget this day. The supporters' tifo, a performance like that, three points, three goals — everything really went well.” The Argentine added some nuance: “Apart from the last fifteen minutes, we played forward constantly and controlled the game. The first half was difficult.” He acknowledged spells in which the team “lacked control without the ball” and made a point of thanking his entire staff.
Source: Bulinews
Result29 Aug 2026
A perfect start for Martín Demichelis: Leipzig beat Borussia Mönchengladbach 3-0 on matchday 1, through Ridle Baku, Antonio Nusa and Rocco Reitz, the last of those scoring against the club that developed him, from a Christopher Nkunku pass. The Argentine head coach savoured it: “I am not going to forget this day. Three goals, three points, everything ended well.”
Source: Bundesliga.com
Other29 Aug 2026
A successful Bundesliga debut for Martín Demichelis: Leipzig beat Mönchengladbach 3-0 (Baku 26', Nusa 49', Reitz 66' against his former club), with 3.96 expected goals against 1.02.
Source: Bundesliga.com
European competition27 Aug 2026
Placed in pot 3, RB Leipzig have drawn a very demanding Champions League league phase: home to Manchester City, PSV Eindhoven, Shakhtar Donetsk and RC Lens, away at Real Madrid, Manchester United, Feyenoord and Como. The competition runs from 8 September 2026 to 27 January 2027.
Source: Bulinews
News last verified on 18 Oct 2026. Sources: sports press (L'Équipe, Le Parisien, Foot Mercato, regional press…) and official club websites — see the link on each item.
Editorial content (playing style, mood, absences, external prediction sources) last verified on 3 Sep 2026. The standings/form data above are refreshed automatically — as is the 1/X/2 estimate, recomputed on every view.