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Former RB Leipzig head coach Ralf Rangnick has hit out at the club’s players after they flew in a celebrity hairdresser from London ahead of their 2-0 defeat at Eintracht Frankfurt last weekend.
Nine Leipzig players, including Chelsea loanee Ethan Ampadu, had their hair cut by English hairdresser Sheldon Edwards at their Frankfurt hotel before the game. The barber, whose previous clients include Olivier Giroud, Jadon Sancho and Raheem Sterling, later published images of his work on social media.
When asked about the barber’s visit, Rangnick, who is now Red Bull’s head of sport and development, was scathing, branding the team’s players as “decadent.”
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“I would have bet €100,000 on our players not flying in a star barber from England to have their cut in the hotel,” Rangnick told Leipziger Volkszeitung. “I would have lost that €100,000.”
“The 2-0 defeat was annoying enough, but that hairdresser leaves me in disbelief. That’s decadent.”
“It’s not far off the golden steak,” Rangnick added, referring to a social media post by Leipzig’s Amadou Haidara, tucking into a golden steak in Dubai during the league’s recent winter break.
Defeat to Frankfurt allowed Bayern Munich to close the gap at the top of the Bundesliga to one point and left Rangnick’s successor, Julian Nagelsmann, questioning his player’s desire to win the league.
“We need to decide whether or not we push towards the title, or whether we stay here, have something to eat and drink, and fall back into the pack,” Nagelsmann said after the match.
“We do not have the quality of Bayern or Dortmund. That means we have to use every minute of training better than them. I don’t always see that.”
Leipzig captain Marcel Sabitzer, however, insisted the team’s defeat was not down to the visit of Edwards.
“It wasn’t the reason for our defeat,” Sabitzer told Bild. “We’ve talked about it in the dressing room and that’s it. Our full focus now is on winning our home match against Gladbach at the weekend.”
Last year, several Borussia Dortmund players were visited by a hairdresser before their 3-0 Champions League defeat at Tottenham Hotspur, though BVB CEO Hans-Joachim Watzke insisted that it had “no influence” on his team’s performance.