OLIVER BURKE may be Scotland’s most exciting young talent and one of the United Kingdom’s most intriguing sporting exports of late. But the 19-year-old is still finding his way in the German Bundesliga.
Signing for RB Leipzig in the summer for a reported fee of £13m, the Kirkcaldy-born forward was touted as an instant success by many: a reputation based solely on 25 games in the English Championship and an inflated transfer fee.
Indeed, the former Nottingham Forrest player has had to accept a bit-part role for Ralph Hasenhuttl’s side, making just one start for the team that has stormed to the summit of the Bundesliga table where they currently sit level on points with German champions Bayern Munich.
There are clear reasons for this. The first and perhaps most obvious one is that he has joined one of the best-stocked teams in the league. Burke has boundless talent but he’s fighting for a starting place against fellow prospects like Timo Werner, David Selke and Yussuf Poulsen. Between them the three goalscorers have made 154 appearances in the German top division despite being 20, 21 and 22-years old respectively.
Burke may have been the key man in Nottingham but he joined Leipzig in a summer that saw them sign another three players of his age for a combined total of £26.3m. Although very much a player the club were desperate to sign, Burke joined a team full of players with just as much promise but even more experience than him.
Another problem for the young forward is that he simply isn’t ready to play consistently at the very highest level. Despite his clear attacking ability – one goal and two assists in just 167 minutes of Bundesliga football – the Scottish internationalist hasn’t yet formed a clear understanding of how Leipzig play.
In 2016 Hasenhuttl has picked up more points than any other coach in the Bundesliga outside of Bayer Leverkusen and Borussia Dortmund, by playing fast-paced, aggressive football. Leipzig not only attack with speed and precision but they also close teams down from the very front. Burke may be able to do the speed and precision but he hasn’t yet learned how to fit in to the system.
Despite bagging a last-minute assist to win the game in his first appearance against Dortmund, Hasenhuttl instead chose to point out Burke’s “empty hard drive”. Failing to follow his runner or stick to his role in attack, the 49-year-old coach was clearly happy for his new signing but knew from just 20 minutes of game time that Burke was still too raw to start for Leipzig’s first team.
The following week saw Burke on the bench, unused in Hamburg and then just nine minutes in the next game against Borussia Moenchengladbach. Speaking to the club website just before the Gladbach game, Burke gave an unfortunate insight to his training drills with the coaching staff when he joked that the first German word he had learned was “abseits”, meaning “offside.”
Indeed his coach’s desire to get the player fight-fit and ready for the Bundesliga spilled into frustration when he took a shot at Scotland national team coach, Gordon Strachan, for wasting the player’s time during a recent international break. Despite starting in October’s 1-1 defeat to Lithuania, Strachan then dropped Burke from his squad. A move that didn’t sit well with his new club manager.
“It certainly would have been better for us if we had him here instead, then we could have worked with him,” lamented Hasenhuttl, while sporting director Ralf Rangnick called the Scotland manager directly for an explanation.
What may have passed as a cynical, somewhat outspoken comment from the Leipzig coach was instead a genuine frustration at losing at least a week’s worth of training. After comparing the young player to Gareth Bale, Strachan rushed Burke in to his team against Malta and Lithuania and then dumped him, despite clear signs from Germany that he had never been ready in the first place.
Referred to as “the force of nature” by Rangnick and in kind by certain sections of the German press, the player clearly has a bright future in a country that is already more than intrigued by him, and in a league famous for developing young talents. Yet upon learning that Burke travelled with Scotland to London only to once again not feature, Germany’s biggest newspaper, Bild, labelled the Leipzig talent the “Wembley tourist.” With that penchant for developing talent, perhaps the best way for Burke to develop is to continue to be nurtured by Hasenhuttl rather than rushed by Scotland.
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