Well, it’s all gone a bit pear-shaped over the past few weeks. I can’t be arsed describing the game, as there are lots of other things that are maybe more important.
The press:
In his ‘Standpoint’ column, Michael Unverdorben of the Salzburger Nachrichten newspaper writes: ‘Austria Salzburg started the season with ambitious goals. The talk was of being promoted as champions and returning to pro football. ....Sport Director/interim coach, Gerhard Stöger, needs to act now’.
Come on! Be honest, if you had done your homework you would know, nobody at the club ever said they expected to – or even wanted to – go up as champions or otherwise. If you want a quote for anything, you’ll find it, but get it all in context! Our declared goals are consolidation and steady improvement – no worse than our position last season, hand-in-hand with off-field infrastructural development. The stadium project has more or less fallen through and we’ve fallen behind expectations, but I wouldn’t exactly say we’re up shit creek without a paddle. Get up – dust yourself down – carry on!
However, this is what journalists do – ignore you, then praise you, then set you up for a fall. First they pretend you don’t exist. Then they realise there’s mileage in writing about you and you’re the good guy, wind in your sails, conquering all before you, then you stumble and there they are – the journos – waiting to run you down from behind. In Austria it’s extreme, often because the standard of journalism doesn’t leave the edge of the forest or come down from the mountains. Wait for the world cup skiing season to start. All the TV people and the newspapers have already half-written their start of season stuff about new methods, new technologies, new stars, expectations for gold medals and world domination. By the time one of their favourites has failed to win any of the first three races they start talking about ‘a crisis’ and ‘dysfunctional organisational set-ups’. So bullshit!
Let Gerhard Stöger take his time finding the right candidate for the manager/coach job. We need a trainer that can remould the team from a highly talented group of artists playing very complicated, time-consuming football; to one that can pass the ball from one end of the pitch to another in five seconds with players who can travel the same distance in twelve seconds. Like Didi Emich, we also need a trainer who can sort out the players who have simply reached the high end of their development curves, or who have problems receiving, controlling and passing the ball under pressure. We need to be looking for powerful, fast, clever players; defenders that can play further upfield – which we have, to a point; and upfield players that are aware of their defensive roles. Above all, we need a trainer who is there for the long haul and who can develop the whole sporting side of the club. So the worst thing we could do right now, Mr Cleverhead, would be to make a snap decision.
Besides which, I don’t know which game some people were watching, but we lost against the league leaders, Wattens, 0-1. They were efficient but did not dominate the game. For the first time in months we created tons of chances, which is a good thing in my book. To describe the forward line as ‘toothless’ was a bit one-sided. Our problem was that none of our chances were really 100% chances – not even Märzendorfer’s. There was always at least one Wattens player between us and the goal. That just underlines the need for faster back-to-front build-up play, but that’s something that requires new thinking and habits for existing players – and some new players in general, all of which takes time – and patience.
Our infrastructure:
For me, infrastructure also includes the entire organisational network of the club. Austria Salzburg has made massive steps in the last five years, but now it’s tell-the-truth time. If we want to play in the second division we need a professional team of people working for the club, floodlights suitable for televised games, increased stadium capacity, marketing, sales, PR and press activity, second division security measures , we need..., we need..., we need...! Money!
Yes, money! This is a real bone of contention. We have to clear out the ideological shit clogging up our brains. In German there’s a movement that claims to be ‘against modern football’; against the increasing, insipid and sometimes rabidly aggressive influence of commercial interests in today’s football. The problem is, too many people subscribe to the notion of being ‘against modern football’ without analysing what it is they really want, or what they don’t want, or what they really mean by ‘modern football’. Some people believe being against modern football means being against everything modern in football; so let’s bring back heavy, brown, lace-up leather footballs, newspapers for shin pads, square goalposts, knee-length shorts, eggs and bacon breakfasts and a halftime pint of stout.
I’m not against modern football; I’m against the negative influence of commerce; of owners and sponsors on the sporting development of a club and on general fan culture, but if we can find sponsors prepared to plough money into the club without significant counterproductive stipulations – why not let their money work for us? Short-term the only way we can generate enough income to train, transport, care for and develop the first team, reserves, the numerous kids and youth teams, and maybe in the future even a women’s team, develop the ground, pay for a skeleton office staff, is by having enough money to do so, which means sponsorship deals – more sponsorship deals – more sponsors – bigger sponsors! Most of the people within the club are still working on a voluntary basis, despite what various sources in various blogs seem to think. Whatever pocket money the players are getting now would not be enough to even survive until Christmas in the second division.
This does not mean we have to sell out. Any sponsor should know and any potential buyer should know that there are some central pillars of Austria Salzburg that cannot be messed around with: The name of the club and the club colours. Those are mistakes that can never be repeated, which is why they have to be set down in any sponsorship contract, before any financial agreement is made. Instead of agreeing everything in secret, then presenting to the fans as a fait accompli – as was done 6 years ago, maybe it would make sense to ask the fans to vote on a kind of Austria Salzburg constitution to be made an integral element in any negotiations.
Even if the press start preparing our obituary, we should be thinking about where we want the club to go from here in the next few years – and how to get there. And those are not decisions to be made just because we’re only tenth in the 3rd division. So we lost 0-1 to Wattens. So what! Nobody outside of Austria knows where Wattens is. If they are promoted, they will go back down one or two years later. The fact is, if we make the right decisions now and don’t get all panicky, Austria Salzburg will be on the map again in a few years and has a far greater potential fan base than Wattens, or Ried, or Mattersburg, or Kapfenberg, or Grödig, or Anif!
I don’t have a lobby and I’m not parroting other people’s ideas to get you to love me, but in my opinion we have to take a couple of steps back, get off the accelerator and think about the changes we need to make to help get Austria Salzburg back to where it deserves to be!
All the best!
Roge
