The long version started for me on Saturday morning with 45 minutes on the cross trainer followed by some knee-crunching painting work along the skirting board in our top room. After my knees gave out I went to have a shower and rally the troops – Christian, Mikko and Drax. As the game was set to kick off at 4pm it made sense to set off a couple of hours earlier as you never know what the traffic’s going to be like. Getting Christian and Mikko to make decisions and keep to timetables is very easy. The phone calls went something like this:
‘Hi Christian. Are you going to the game?’
‘Yes. Should we meet at my flat at two?’
‘OK: See you there at 2pm’.
The next call was to Mikko:
‘Hi Mikko. We’re meeting at Christian’s at 2pm’.
‘OK. See you at Christian’s at 2pm’.
So far so good. Drax has a habit of leaving decisions up to fate and then blaming fate for things that happen. He’d been out with Mikko unto 3am Saturday morning, but still hadn’t been able to win the battle against the forces of fate by saying either: ‘Yes, I’m going to the game’ or ‘No, I’m not going to the game’. So when I called him I was surprised to hear a decision had been made in favour of a goal fest in Saalfelden. However, a Drax ‘yes’ does not bear any hallmarks of a verifiable entity. It has the approximate predictive power of the word ‘Mañana’ in Spanish. So I call him and ask him if he’s coming. YES,...........BUT. A Drax ‘yes’ always comes with a ‘but’, so I wasn’t surprised when he said:
‘YES – BUT I won’t be able to make it for 2pm’.
‘Errm. When can you be at Christian’s flat’.
‘I can’t say. I have to wait for Andi to collect something’.
In a parallel universe, where people think ahead and make clear decisions, a phone call made to Andi a couple of hours earlier would have ensured that Andi had come half an hour earlier to collect his shit, but we’re not living in a parallel universe – so three people had to wait half an hour. At 2.30 pm we finally got going. All attempts at forcing an apology were in vain. For me, frustration at having to wait was simmering nicely on the back burner; and for Drax the indiginity of having been criticised, despite his being a victim of fate, was worming away there waiting for an opportunity to surface.
Somewhere between Lofer and Saalfelden we got onto the issue of where the new Seat Alhambra was being built. Not being able to multitask in any modern sense of the phrase, I foolishly contradicted Drax’s claim that the Alhambra was still being produced in Palmela in Portugal. I can’t drive AND think! Maybe I just wanted to get one over on him, but Drax wins his wars by allowing the others to blow their cover and make rash claims that can easily be shot down. So I say, ‘didn’t they stop producing the Alhambra there when Ford stopped sharing the floor pan with the Galaxy and the Sharan in around 2004?’ A plausible claim, as Drax didn’t know the Ford Galaxy was built on the same production lines up until the mid noughties; but plausible is not the same as true. I’d set up a claim and he knew, in this case, that I was wrong. Instead of taking the moral high ground and waiting for ultimate proof of my fallibility, Drax launched one of the cruellest and most inhuman verbal attacks my faint heart has ever been subjected to. Words were spoken; insults were fired at my ears – of a ferocity and downright nastiness the world has hitherto never witnessed.
‘You G..................................................’
For the sake of the mental health of readers at home and abroad I have no intention of repeating those foul and evil outpourings, suffice it to say, there will be consequences!
Fortunately, Christian has a mobile phone which can do everything a modern 5-star hotel can offer, so once he’d checked the navigator for the right turn-off into Saalfelden, and monitored the status of the servers in his company, logged into the webcams in Yemen and remote-closed his sun blinds, he promised to check out the location of the production plant for the Sharan and the Alhambra.
Anyway, we’d already heard there were more police there than last time (via Christian’s pocket-size oracle), so we weren’t surprised to see the first meat wagons. After parking we made our way up though the housing estate to the leafy lane leading up to the ground. Well, talk about overkill! It wasn’t the trees that were blocking the light; it was the 100 police Darth Vaders and their remarkably realistic robot dogs. It just goes to show how many millions of light years Austria is ahead in terms of crowd management J. Having not informed themselves online by monitoring the blogs, and having not liased with the Bavarian police to gather info on how many Salzburg cars were crossing the border into the ‘Deutsches Eck’ (where there is a fantastic offer of a ‘quickie for €80’), it was clear to see the police had been told to prepare for a small uprising or a siege of the fortress.
The fact is, the police are easy to spot whatever they wear, but dressing them up like Star Wars extras with laser guns and rabid Alsatians does not directly contribute to an atmosphere of de-escalation. So the immediate message seemed to be ‘Welcome to Saalfelden – you are not welcome!’
After paying €7 for our tickets we headed off down the steps to our narrow enclosure at the side of the pitch, picking up some beers on the way. After meeting up with Barbara F we took up our positions on the barriers with the sun shining directly in our faces. So we have beer in our hands, female accompaniment, lots of sunshine and are surrounded by stunning alpine scenery – so life’s good, right?
Bollocks it is. Christian logs into the worldwideweb to deliver the first downer of the day. The new Seat Alhambra is manufactured in Portugal. Drax does his best to give me a magnanimous smile, but I can see the insipid theatrical green gas of smarminess seeping out of his self-satisfied grin. Urrrgh!
Bring on the freaks! In the countryside entertainment is limited and people are happy for what they can get, when they can get it. ‘Ladies and gentlemen; today’s matchball is being flown in by a remote controlled ‘Octocopter’’. An 8-blade miniature copter hovers over the centre circle and in a not-so-daring and hardly spectacular display of flight acrobatics, a ball is released from the breathtaking altitude of about 20 metres above the pitch, and after a fall of well over 1 second the ball bounces to rest accompanied by rapturous cheers from the home crowd in their tin grandstand. So much excitement – and the game hasn’t even started yet.
Then it dawned on us that the referee was the same bloke that handed out four red cards on Neumarkt’s cute little five-a-side pitch last spring in a game that lacked as much aggression as it did quality. There are some refs that just get on with a game. They make mistakes like all humans, but they are not the focal point of the game. Then there are others! There are referees that look for eye contact, that seem to beg you to react to a decision, that run halfway across the pitch to stand nose-to-nose with a player who is obviously close to losing his rag – just to see if something happens. They hand out more cards than a field sales team at a trade fair.
And things went from bad to worse. The game started and after about two seconds it became clear that of the two teams on the pitch, we were only just in the top ten. Lamed by the fact that now there was no trainer to scapecoat for defeats, by the unrealistic expectations placed on them by the visiting fans, and the fact that FC Pinzgau Saalfelden actually had more supporters at the game than we did, there was more of a mood of damage limitation in our camp than of fire-brand heart-and-soul, all-out, death-before-dishonour football. Without being spectacular Saalfelden played some clever short-pass one-touch football and without anything approximating a midfield, we were chasing the ball from the off.
After the first 45 minutes most of our chances had come from individual pieces of skill, from players such as Gabriel Kreuzwirth, but for the most part Saalfelden starved Marko Vujic and Patrick Mayer of service by outplaying us in midfield with short accurate passes ending in passes onto the forward lines. Worse still, there was no obvious way we could stamp our authority on the game as heads were down and the atmosphere in our block was subdued. Having only handed out 3 yellow cards up to the 40th minute, there was still time for referee Struz to get a last one in before the break, so he gave Elias Kircher a second yellow and pulled out his favourite big bright red card. I have no idea whether both fouls were card-worthy or not, it all happened at the other side of the pitch in the shade and in close proximity to the home supporters – or whatever they are, but with ten men and no spark of genius, things didn’t look good.
The referee did not necessarily decide the result of the game with his decisions, but there were so many decisions where both teams looked at each other, not able to understand how they had been awarded a free kick or not been given one.
Drax’s mood of victorious magnanimity had dissolved. Christian was ranting on about us not having a midfield and Barbara was whinging about the tasteless spam bread cakes; not bad – just tasteless. Then the fucking ‘Octocopter’ flew over again and if it had flown closer to our sector I’m sure one of our rocket scientists would have attempted to ground it for good.
Second half – more of the same. I ask the question again and again, how many referees actually play football? When you play football ‘actively’ you know which players dive and which ones only fall when they’re fouled. You also know the difference between a foul that has been enhanced by a theatrical dive and a dive that starts announcing its own arrival five seconds before it happens. We all saw the dive, but we couldn’t see the contact – Mr Struz did though, so he gave a penalty. Alex Trappl got a yellow card for seeing the situation differently. If a referee doesn’t have a strong ego, he may confuse a difference of opinion with dissent, but having a difference of opinion to the referee and telling him your opinion is not against the rules of football.
1-0 for Pinzgau Saalfelden, on the balance on things, deserved, but not necessarily the most sporting way to win your games. From this point onwards we looked even more distraught and Saalfelden began to die and come back to life, and lie around on the floor, and not fetch the ball when it went out of play. All very professional – all very sporting. They were still the better team though, not fantastic, but more cohesive than us. The substitutions on 60 minutes, Pavlovic for Nico Mayer and Borozni for Patrick Mayer, didn’t change the essence of the game. Nico saw yellow on his way out.
Erwin Keil put the final nail in the coffin on 67 minutes making it 2-0 to the hosts and a couple of minutes later there was a clash between Dusan Pavlovic and another player, right in front of our faces. It just goes to show that supporters can be just as fallible as referees. I thought it was either a foul on Dusan or a 50-50, Drax (yes him) said it was a nasty foul by Dusan. Christian just reverted to his default setting, which is to nod unconvincingly at whatever Drax says. The ref was convinced, as he always is, and saw no alternative (he seldom does) but to send Dusan off. Barbara F’s opinion is that Dusan is too cute to do anything nasty. ‘But he has really sweet eyes...’.
2-0 down, nine men against a rabid rural mob, the only thing to do was for a couple of our biggest men to storm over and give the police something to chase – to justify their presence, arguably more entertaining than the octocopter, but in terms of our reputation – somewhat less useful. At least Schutzei was there to cheer us all up with his legendary ra-ta-ta – ta-ta-ta – ta-ta-ta – ta....AUSTRIA! Even if we lose, we should lose in style!
The police did their best to be as inconspicuous as possible by gnashing their teeth under their white helmets and displaying a vast array of instruments basically designed for hitting people, and were greeted with a friendly salute from our tribe: ‘Hurrah, hurrah – die Polizei ist da!’
Maybe Mr Struz had a bad conscience about the Dusan incident, but if it was the right decision – then so be it. Still, in the interests of fairness he decided to send Saalfelden’s Tamas Tandari off after just 11 minutes in the game (at least Dusan managed 20 minutes) and to make sure nobody could accuse him of bias, he sent off Saalfelden’s trainer as well. The best decision of the day was to blow the final whistle on 90 minutes as we could have played for three hours without scoring a goal.
I’d love to tell you a story of how we all went home for a few beers and got incredibly drunk, but not even that is true. Our drinking session back home after the game was as harmless as our attempt to score in Saalfelden. As far as I know the only person to score on Saturday night was Mikko, who after receiving a mysterious SMS from a woman, suddenly disappeared into the night! Bless his cotton socks.
As I’ll be in Hamburg next weekend I’ll have to miss out on the Anif game, but if they leave their trainer in Maxglan we can still claim to have got something out of the game.
All the best - Roge
FC Pinzgau Saalfelden - SV Austria Salzburg 2-0 (0-0)
Austria Salzburg played with:
Trappl; Kreuzwirth, Sonko, Strauss, Kircher; Urbanek, Winkler (70. Federer), Reifeltshammer, N. Mayer (61. Borozni); P. Mayer (61. Pavlovic), Vujic
Goals:
1-0: Fabian (47., penalty)
2-0: Keil (67.)
Shots: Saalfelden 7 / Austria 8
Shots on target: Saalfelden 4 / Austria 4
Shots blocked: Saalfelden 1 / Austria 1
Corners: Saalfelden 4 / Austria 6
Fouls: Saalfelden 17 / Austria 25
Fouls: Saalfelden 3 / Austria 3
Yellow cards:
Saalfelden: 3 (Müllauer, 15./foul; Unterberger, 40./foul; Fürstauer, 72./foul)
Austria: 3 (Kircher, 12./foul; Trappl, 47./criticism; N. Mayer, 60./foul)
Yellow/red:
Saalfelden: 0
Austria: 1 (Kircher, 43./foul)
Red Cards:
Saalfelden: 1 (Tandari, 86/foul)
Austria: 1 (Pavlovic, 80./foul)
Saalfelden, Sportplatz Bürgerau, 1250 spectators
Ref: Christian Struz; Assistants: Wolfram Aufschnaiter, Herbert Gangl
