Measured purely by the numbers from Sunday evening, the situation is relatively clear: Ralf Rangnick has triggered a football boom in Austria in recent months. 45,700 spectators attended the final Nations League home game against Croatia at the Ernst Happel Stadium, which is quite remarkable given that interest in the national team was at a record low prior to Rangnick’s arrival.
However, a look at downtown Vienna and later at the south-west curve of the arena showed that numbers can lie – quite well indeed. Because the international match in Vienna was dominated by around 25,000 people who didn’t wave red-white-red flags at the traditional Radetzky March before the game, but sang the Croatian national anthem a little later.
So the dream of a fast football boom hasn’t quite worked out for the Austrians under their new German national coach, who, however, also benefits from the thesis of lying numbers elsewhere. Rangnick has played six games since June as team boss, with a record of four defeats, a draw and a win, which puts him close to his unloved predecessor Franco Foda in terms of results. The 1: 3 in the domestic away game against the Croatians consequently sealed Austria’s relegation from the Nations League Division A.
However: “Including this game, we made four good ones out of six, which we controlled for long stretches,” said Rangnick after the final whistle, and despite the expandable record, he was right. In their difficult group against France, Denmark and Croatia, the Austrians had proven in all games that their level could be sufficient to keep up with teams that will soon be able to play for the world championship title in Qatar. However, as Rangnick said at his inaugural press conference in June, just keeping up is not the medium-term goal.
The 90 minutes against Croatia showed in a condensed form the qualities and problems that the 64-year-old coach found in Austria. Once again it was clear that the team now plays football tactically at a completely different level than under Foda.
Despite an early goal by Luka Modric (6th minute), the Austrians looked committed, quickly equalized through Christoph Baumgartner (9th) and then created chances either through the middle or with crosses from the outside players in a three-man/five-man system. In the end, 18 shots on goal clearly spoke for the hosts, but because Baumgartner and Austria’s new record national player Marko Arnautovic missed the best chances of a 2-1 win, there weren’t enough goals. With a win, the Austrians would have held the A-League and world champions France would have suffered the embarrassment of being relegated to the B-League.
Rangnick’s idea of playing with two forwards and three defenders proved its worth, but also showed that progress is still fragile. When the coach made lively substitutions after 62 minutes, changed the basic defensive structure and in Maximilian Wöber and Stefan Lainer, two new defenders who are not part of the absolute A team, the game turned extremely bad: Lainer twice allowed a cross from Ivan Perisic, twice the Croatian winger found teammates at the far post, twice they were completely free because the assignment was no longer correct.
The goals for 1: 2 and 1: 3 were almost identical, which is why Rangnick admitted that the defeat was also due to his changes: “In retrospect, we may have gone all-in too early with these changes. You’re always smarter afterwards, I wouldn’t do that anymore.”
From the two goals conceded, however, a somewhat larger problem can also be derived, which the Austrians could deal with a little more with regard to their next big goal, qualifying for the EM 2024, than assignments in the penalty area: Rangnick finds a very talented, but something unbalanced squad.
“I’m sticking to the fact that we have a lot of good central defenders in our squad and – when everyone’s on board – a lot of good central midfielders,” emphasized the coach, but: “Where we still have a bit of problems, it doesn’t matter if we play with two or three players in the center back, those are the full-back positions. We have to make sure that we always find the best solution in each case.”
The best solution against Croatia was to let FC Bayern central player Marcel Sabitzer play on the wing. “It’s not my desired position now, but I’m not in the mood to get upset,” said Sabitzer. He saw the problems further ahead anyway, where there was an urgent need to change the determination: “Many nations have this one nine in them that makes the goals easy – actually we do too, but today Marko just gave up one.”
Rangnick didn’t like the idea of letting the 33-year-old Arnautovic practice more shots on goal from now on, but said: “We just have to pull games like this onto our side and decide for ourselves. Especially when we’re heading towards the European Championship orientation, that will be very important.” Austria, who will not be there in Qatar, is now aiming for 2024, with the qualifying groups being drawn on October 8th. What is certain is that it will then no longer only be against top nations, which also has a positive side in view of the lack of euphoria due to the lack of results.
But then there are no more excuses, as Sabitzer emphasized: “There will certainly be other games, against smaller nations, against whom we want to be superior. We’ll see if we’re that too.”
