Robert Klauß: Shaping Rapid Wien With Red Bull Tactics In 2024/25 - Tactical Analysis

Jonas Bartsch - Total Football Analyst

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Austrian football was different 20 years ago.

Rapid and Austria Wien, the two biggest clubs in the country’s capital, had been consistently battling it out to win the Austrian Bundesliga title for years.

SK Rapid Wien has won the most titles in the league to this day, winning 32 championships in Austria and one in Germany in 1941.

Cue 2005, and the landscape of Austrian football changed drastically.

Red Bull, the energy drink manufacturer, decided to buy a football club in Salzburg and invest heavily in infrastructure as well as the team itself.

German Ralf Rangnick was hired to develop a Red Bull style of play, which ended up being centred around counter-pressing and rapid, hostile attacks.

With the rise of a new dominant force in the Bundesliga as well as the youth categories in the small country in the Alps, the former giants had to reinvent themselves.

Currently, more than half of the clubs, especially in the top half of the table, are trying to imitate or are heavily influenced by the Red Bull way of working.

Rapid started to become the everlasting second place in Austria, always falling short of Red Bull Salzburg.

Many players left the club to strive for the German Bundesliga or even Red Bull Salzburg itself, as Marcel Sabitzer did, resulting in a decline in Rapid Wien's quality.

The start of the 2020s was especially rough for Rapid because, after another second-place finish in the 2020/21 season, Rapid have never managed to finish better than in fourth place.

Last season, Rapid were even on the verge of missing out on the championship playoff and facing relegation in the relegation play-off for the lower half of the table, forcing the club into a coaching change.

After Zoran Barisic was released, the club hired German coach Robert Klauß as their new head coach.

Klauß found immediate success, qualifying for the championship playoffs at the last minute and climbing back into fourth place.

What’s interesting about Robert Klauß's style of play is that he is a Red Bull coach through and through.

The now 39-year-old started his coaching career at RB Leipzig and went through the ranks of their academy to their Bundesliga team, becoming the assistant coach of both Ralf Rangnick and Julian Nagelsmann during their respective tenures.

After a stint in Nuremberg, Klauß is now bringing the Red Bull tactics to Rapid Wien.

The club is currently in second place again, but this time behind SK Sturm Graz, and is in contention to win a title again this season after 16 years.

In this tactical analysis, which is a team analysis, we will examine how Robert Klauß's tactics transformed a struggling team into a Red Bull-powered juggernaut in just months.

Verticality Over Ball Security

Looking at what Rapid Wien does with the ball this season under Robert Klauß's coaching style, there are obvious ties to how the Red Bull teams around the world are playing.

Robert Klauss's preferred formation is a 4-4-2 setup, which usually turns out to be a 4-2-2-2 formation because he does not want his wingers near the sideline.