Now the Tofiq Bahramow Stadium in Baku is also part of Austrian football history. Large and small arenas characterize the constant ups and downs of a very small football nation, which over the decades has repeatedly failed to become a big one, even if the talent was there every now and then. Cordoba and Gijon would be worth mentioning, miracles, disgrace and disgrace, depending on your perspective. Or Landskrona, the small Swedish town where the even smaller Faroe Islands drove the then team boss Josef Hickersberger and his miracle offensive from Toni Polster and Andreas Herzog to despair in 1991.
You will quickly forget this because in Austria the euphoria sets in immediately after the final whistle and causes dangerous forgetfulness once an important football game has been won. But: Baku almost became such a sad place.
On a dreary Monday evening in front of the almost pathetic backdrop of just over 7,000 spectators in Azerbaijan’s second national stadium, right winger Tural Bayramov, 22, from Baku had the chance to become part of Austria’s varied football history in stoppage time. Bayramov got the ball free in front of the goal, the equalizer was on his feet, but his shot hit the left post and was lost in the empty stadium darkness. There was therefore a 1-0 win for Austria away in Azerbaijan, and Ralf Rangnick’s team can now plan for a much shorter trip: next summer they will compete at the European Championships in Germany. While the parallel game in qualifying group F in Brussels was canceled after an attack against Swedish football fans, Team Austria was able to keep its thoughts on football.
“It is always something very special to qualify for a European Championship,” said Konrad Laimer, and the historians will agree with him. This is only the fourth time that Austria is taking part in a final tournament, and the third time in a row after qualifying for sport. Statisticians will counter that an increase to 24 participants before the 2016 tournament was needed to make this possible, but this time there is a counter-argument: This Austrian team would probably have qualified for every final round, because they present themselves – differently than in in the recent past – not only as playful and talented, but also as remarkably stubborn and difficult to beat.
Austria presents itself as remarkably stubborn and difficult to beat
There are two confident victories against Sweden this year, as well as a draw and a narrow defeat recently against Belgium, as well as nine points against Azerbaijan and Estonia, football nations like the Faroe Islands – therefore basically more fearful opponents of Austro. The conditions weren’t always the easiest: “It felt like we played with a different starting lineup in every course, but you could feel that we were getting closer and closer together, even if we obviously still had to improve a lot,” said Laimer.
In Baku, for example, David Alaba, Marko Arnautovic, Michael Gregoritsch, Stefan Posch and Kevin Danso, all of whom were leaders or at least starting eleven, were missing. There were also oddities: Rangnick and his assistant coach Peter Pechtold were only able to enter the country the day before after spending several hours at Baku airport due to visa problems.
What followed was not a top-class game, but a defensive one against Azerbaijan, in which Laimer had the best chance to take the lead after 18 minutes, but missed with a lob. Marcel Sabitzer’s penalty after 54 minutes ultimately made it 1-0, which was only briefly threatened in the heated final phase: First Bayramov narrowly missed the goal, then Guido Burgstaller made his comeback after retiring in 2019 within two minutes before the final whistle the yellow-red card.
Rangnick didn’t care about any of that. “That was an extraordinary achievement in the last few weeks and months,” said the team boss: “I told the boys that I am very proud of them. The qualifying group was one of the most difficult.” Rangnick actually has to be given credit for leaving the feared opponent Sweden behind: the 3-1 win in Solna in September in particular stands out as a mature, tactically excellent performance and shows the path that Rangnick has taken.
He builds his team on pillars like Alaba and Arnautovic, but above all on a solid framework of footballing principles that the well-trained generation of players – curiously also the legacy of RB strategist Rangnick – can implement. The fact that this not only creates stability but also offensive joy is the clear difference to his predecessor Franco Foda, whose defensive tactics led to a crisis in the relationship between the national team and the nation.
The assured participation in the European Championship has ended the doubts for the time being, even if a pleasant realism has spread under Rangnick. Despite all the joy in Baku, the qualification was also a kind of fulfillment of expectations: “We have ignited euphoria again, not too much, but we have earned an appreciation for ourselves,” was how Sabitzer accurately assessed the situation. Like the rest of his team, he will know what to do to increase this appreciation a little before the summer trip: Historically, the euphoria usually arose after successes against their big neighbors from Germany – there is already an opportunity to do so in November .
