And on the fifth day Tom Hofer sorted out all the animals he wasn’t going to put on the arc; elephants, mice, snakes, sloths, monkeys, cuddly koala bears, kangaroos, giraffes, rhinos, hippos, dogs, frogs... In fact, the only animals that look like surviving the flood are leopards and cheetahs. I don’t want to strain the comparison until it snaps, but you get the picture. In the first couple of games we looked a bit lightweight and newborn. Without Sonko Pa, Märzendorfer, Kletzl and Schmidt the outward aggression and high-adrenaline situations were missing at the back. However, in the first half of the season we saw lots of yellow and red and it was hard to discern a system. Now the system is starting to take a hold and it’s brains driving brawn rather than the other way around.
In the first ten minutes it was clear St Johann were looking for an early goal to break our discipline and force us to come forward. The way I saw it, on a bad day we could have been two down. They were on top of us and trying to force errors all over the pitch. However, it wasn’t a bad day – it was a good day. Barbara F turned up about 10 minutes after kick-off and asked how it was going. I said St. Johann were more dangerous at that moment, but they’d run out of steam and revert to type. After 15 minutes they were no longer able to keep up the intensity and as we began to string passes together a weird sense of calm took over. For the first time this season I thought ‘we are not in danger’. Winkler, Reifeltshammer and Hirsch had things under control at the back and I realised we were playing football for the first time!
Suddenly it was looking like a training game with players seeking sensible passes, opening up play down the wings, overlapping, backtracking. It was unspectacularly pleasurable, like getting drunk on shandy. After the diet of vodka and vinegar served up in the first half of the season, this was easy reading. Schriebl and his torso of steel in attacking midfield ensured St Johann couldn’t build up their own attacks and without doing anything stunning, we were doing things right and St Johann were slowly beginning to look a bit forlorn.
On 26 minutes MV (who else?) put us in front. It looked like their keeper ballsed up, but it’s not as if anyone cared. I think by that time St Johann had already run out of ideas. Once we showed we weren’t prepared to break forward at all costs they found it difficult to construct anything in our half. We had the game ‘under control’.
Obviously, having been through so many false dawns nobody at Austria Salzburg is going to relax at 1-0. The system continued to work and instead of worrying about the result I was watching the players. The more we passed the ball around, the more space we found. With each player having more time on the ball the number of bad passes was kept to a minimum. Going into the break at 1-0 up would have been OK, but another Vujic goal on 44 minutes and a Stefan Federer banana shot inside the far post on 46 minutes meant that at 3-0 the lights went out for our guests.
Normally this would have been the perfect game for too much beer, but somehow it was good the way it was. As Drax never turned up, Christian was in China, and Mikko, Schafi and Raph were in with the mob at the other end of the stands, I was left to wax philosophical. I should have gone into the pen too. At around 9 or 10 degrees Celsius it was just too cold for standing around. Salva and Sappo’s 90-minute animation programme is just what you need on days like these.
Second verse – same as the first! For the first time in a while there were no frustrated screams at players from the crowd to ‘play this ball’, ‘play that ball’. The focus for a while was more on the referee and the linesman on our side. It would not be good for a linesman to be blind, but at Austria Salzburg we certainly recommend deafness. Flo, who is responsible for putting my reports online at the moment, is one of the reasons deafness is a guarantee for mental health among linesmen. For ninety minutes a friendly, intelligent and unassuming young man becomes ‘one bad muthafu****’. Like the Incredible Hulk in purple. I dread to think what the creative side of his brain cooked up for the linesman, but it probably wasn’t ‘Bad luck old chap. Maybe you’ll get the next decision right’. As soon as the game is over his purple rage subsides and he becomes David Bruce Banner again.
Maybe the ref handed out too many yellow cards and the odd offside decision went the wrong way, but the positives outweighed. Rajic is a clever player and technically endowed, without any silly flashiness. Pavlovic was brilliant. Schriebl is a tank and of benefit to build-up play and as a defensive destroyer in midfield. Raphi Reifeltsammer is looking more and more in control and Nico Mayer is an artist and an athlete who does things that involve stretches that would tear the average person in two.
Looking back two days later the only thing I remember about the second half was Georg Seidl coming on in the second half on 76 minutes and taking a speculative long shot that found its way into the back of the net on 82 minutes. 4-0 for Austria Salzburg and at full time there were the first real celebrations with the fans as the arc finally began to take shape.
