Dominik Szoboszlai: ‘Leipzig don’t fear anyone — even Erling Haaland’
Ever since the Champions League draw was made in November, Dominik Szoboszlai has looked forward to reuniting with his good friend Erling Haaland — if only on opposites sides of the pitch.
“We played together at Red Bull Salzburg for one year (from January 2019 to December 2019) but that was enough for us to become very close,” the 22-year-old tells The Athletic. “He’s a great guy. It was difficult to settle into the team for him at first because he didn’t speak German. I know what that feels like. When I came to Salzburg aged 15 (from Hungary), I was in the same situation. I told myself, ‘I have to support him’.”
They didn’t spend enough time together in Salzburg for the Norwegian striker to learn German as well as Szoboszlai, who has a strong command of the language and a charming Austrian accent, too, but Haaland was so grateful for his old team-mate’s collegial care that a strong bond was formed.
Since Haaland’s move to Borussia Dortmund just over three years ago, they have frequently visited each other and spoken regularly on video calls. The prospect of playing against each other for only the second time on Wednesday night — at least one of them has missed out on previous potential meetings because of injury — has had both of them making plenty of fun of each other.
However, Szoboszlai denies he’s been paying any closer attention to Manchester City games as a result.
“I’ve been watching them anyway — because of Erling,” he laughs. “We played them in the group stage in 2021. Those were already very difficult games without him. (Leipzig lost 6-3 in Manchester and won 2-1 at home.) They’ve only become better with him in attack. They’re a cool team with so much quality, but so are we.”
Leipzig, it’s no exaggeration to say, haven’t felt this good about themselves since making it to the Champions League semi-finals in 2020 under Julian Nagelsmann. They’re only four points behind league leaders Bayern Munich after losing just one of their last 20 games in all competitions (a 2-1 loss at home to Union Berlin 11 days ago) and have just welcomed back key forward Christopher Nkunku, a substitute in Saturday’s 3-0 win at Wolfsburg.
Frenchman Nkunku scored a hat-trick in the defeat at the Etihad in the 2021-22 Champions League group stage, while Szoboszlai was on target for the Saxons’ win in the return leg. A spate of injuries and frequent managerial changes since his move from Salzburg to the Red Bull Arena in January 2021 have hampered his progress in the past, but in the current campaign, the golden boy of Hungarian football is shining at last. The national team captain’s glittering club form this season is one of the factors behind Leipzig’s remarkable consistency.
He’s been no doubt helped by Marco Rose taking over last summer. Szoboszlai has known Leipzig’s head coach since he first went to Austria for an extended trial as a teenager and it was Rose who made him a regular in Salzburg’s first team in 2018-19.
“He trusts me and gives me a lot of confidence,” Szoboszlai says. “But I have worked for it, too, in training and in the games, and as much I like looking at myself, my first priority is the team. I’m happy that I can help them.”
Standing at 6ft 1in (1.86m) tall, Szoboszlai is an elegant hybrid player, a wide No 10 or inverted winger, depending on your preferred terminology. In pre-modern times, he would have been his side’s playmaker, hanging out in midfield while others got their socks dirty and delivered the ball to his feet, but Szoboszlai quickly learned that the Red Bull group of football clubs wouldn’t stand for that.
“I still like to play but I learned in the Salzburg academy and then at FC Liefering (Red Bull’s second-division feeder club) that I wouldn’t get on the pitch much unless I did the work,” he says. “If you can do both well, it’s even better.”
Rose’s focus on intensity out of possession notwithstanding, Szoboszlai has been the joint second-best player in terms of assists in the Bundesliga, as well as a real menace from set pieces.
In his teenage years, he practised about 200 free kicks each day, he says, finding the best technique to hit them without getting influenced too much by others. Szoboszlai credits his upbringing in a football-mad household in Szekesfehervar, a city 65 kilometres southwest of Budapest, for his fine technique.
“If it weren’t for my father’s dedication and that good training he gave me, I’d hardly be here now,” he says.
When Zsolt Szoboszlai played journeyman football in Hungary, his teams often enjoyed the illicit advantage of having an extra man on the pitch. But as the offender was only three years old, referees and opposition players were prepared to let it slide.
“He took me to many games and sometimes, I couldn’t help myself, running after the ball,” Szoboszlai recalls with a wide smile.
The Szoboszlais lived in a small flat but that was no bar to the boy receiving a 24-7 footballing education.
“He put up empty bottles in the living room and I had to dribble through them. If I didn’t knock over bottles, I got an ice cream as a reward.” Szoboszlai doesn’t remember playing with anything else but the ball as a kid.
In 2007, Szoboszlai Senior and two friends with similarly gifted kids — Dominik Molnar and Bendeguz Bolla, who signed for Wolves in July 2021 — set up their own youth team to better foster their talents. Phoenix Gold FC specialised in teaching kids on a small pitch, valuing technique over stamina and tactics, and playing a very distinctive short-passing game. Soon, scouts wrestled for position on the touchline and Szoboszlai signed for Salzburg’s under-18s in 2017.
It’s been more of slow burn since he progressed to the German Bundesliga — there had been plenty of interest from England and Italy as well — but performances have begun to sync with the early hype in recent weeks.
Leipzig’s sense of rhythm and defensive balance, and Szoboszlai’s creative skills, are feeding off each other in a positive loop, and Wednesday’s stage is set for the kind of breakthrough his team-mates Nkunku and Josko Gvardiol have already achieved.
More than that though, Szoboszlai believes in his team’s ability to trouble fancied opponents at this level.
“We’ve beaten Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Manchester United and City themselves in the Champions League already,” says the Leipzig man.
“We’re not thinking, ‘We don’t really have a chance — we’ll have to defend, defend, defend’. We go into every game with a plan that we’ll stick to. We’ll go for it, no matter who the opposition is.
“Erling or not, we play to win this game.”