In fact, the crap summer probably caused lots of folks to forget about driving off somewhere for the weekend. At the end of the day, a crap summer in Salzburg is par for the course in northern England. When I was a kid, apart from when we went to the coast, it was almost impossible to get a decent dose of sunburn. Two days of blustery sun and clouds, one day of rain, highest temperature round about 21°C. The sea on the East Coast would rarely get above 16°C and you had a choice of not swimming and the boredom would force you into victimising your younger brother by throwing stones at him and making him get into the water with his clothes on, or you tried to swim - with your mouth shut - to avoid the risk of smooching with the floating excreta drifting around the coast from the next local sewage outlet.
Furthermore, when you are ten years of age you don’t have any serious outward evidence of manhood, and when you get into water that, on a cold day, maybe only has a surface temperature of 13°C, you become an androgynous pink showroom dummy – floating around in a diluted detritus solution. All I’m really trying to say to the Austrians is – stop moaning about the water being too cold to swim in at 20°C! – Stop whingeing about having to bathe in lakes that don’t have drinking water quality! – Stop whining about summers that don’t come with microwave burn guarantees. Enjoy a week in Whitby, Bridlington or Scarborough, and learn the meaning of ‘grateful’.
So, in terms of football, our new season did not kick off according to the grand design. The plan was to dazzle Innsbruck with breathtaking Barcelona-style passing combinations and brutally efficient finishing. Thinking back to the English holidays we have to ask ourselves – are we not expecting a bit too much? As far as I could see, Innsbruck had sent out a very young team of boys to do the jobs of men. Although they didn’t seem to have any obvious means of getting the ball near our goals, it’s not as if they didn’t know how to run and spoil. They had their defence pushed upfield to good effect for long periods and caught us offside on a number of occasions. They crowded us out in midfield, which led to the inevitable losses of possession or the alternative series of two passes forward – one pass back. If you don’t understand chess, then it’s fucking awful to watch, but Innsbruck knew that hard work was the only way they were going to get anything out of the game – so they worked hard.
All around me people were demanding the passes to go forward, but if there are no players free to take the ball – who are you supposed to pass to? The only thing I’d complain about is that we are football snobs. There is a great fear of two things in Austrian football: lifting the ball to take control of the game in the air, and long balls over the heads of the midfield. Nobody is saying it’s attractive, nobody is saying it makes sense to play the whole game like that – but as every boxer knows: vary your shots! Win the ball in defensive midfield, lob it over midfield and send three players racing forward. Even if you don’t score a goal, it teaches the opponent’s defence not to stand so far up the pitch and opens up more space in midfield. Vary your shots!!! Be unpredictable!
Anyway, a goal’s a goal. Don’t ask me what kind of build-up there was to Marko Vujic’s goal on 36 minutes as my memory of the entire game consists of knowing that we won and that it didn’t rain. I’m nearly 46 and I don’t do details anymore; there’s no room on my hard drive for new information. 1-0 for Austria Salzburg.
At half time, while everybody was marvelling at the half-time ball juggling act, I was worrying about Alex Hütter’s sudden image change. One of Alex’s many personas is ‘stadium announcer’ and since I can remember Alex always used to appear in a dowdy suit and tie, or at least half formally dressed, like a salesman hanging out at lunchtime during a sales techniques congress. What happened? All of a sudden, there he is in a pair of leisurely non-business trousers and one of the new Austria Salzburg Puma trackie tops. Mr. cool and relaxed – or what? Fashion god! If this is the start of a modelling career, Alex, don’t think we will be buying a copy of your nude calendar!
But I digress.
Not yet up to match fitness, Borozni had been swapped for Bernhard – his hair is like a shield of steel – Kletzl in the first half, and at the break Nico Mayer came for Peter Urbanek, who had managed the physically impossible feat of heading the ball down – over the crossbar. Although we had more of the game in the second half and those little Tyrolean legs were starting to tire, so were ours. The last twenty minutes or so were, for people who don’t know the meaning of ‘grateful’, bloody awful to watch. Sonko got a bang on the head and started overdoing the fancy stuff at the back and lost the ball on a couple of occasions, we got sloppy and in the last ten minutes Innsbruck got enough of the ball to get one or two shots off on goal. Our new keeper, Martin Eisl, saved our sorry arses both times and at full time we ended up with the three points - for which we have to be grateful!
Be good; or if you can’t be good – be careful!
Roge
SV Austria Salzburg - FC Wacker Innsbruck Amateure 1-0 (1-0)
Austria Salzburg played with:
Eisl; Kreuzwirth, Sonko, Reifeltshammer, Hirsch; Urbanek (46. N. Mayer), Borozni (25. Kletzl), Federer, Pavlovic, Märzendorfer (63. Kircher); Vujic
Goal: Vujic (36.) (Assist: Pavlovic)
Shots total: Austria 17 / Wacker 8
Shots on target: Austria 7 / Wacker 4
Shots blocked: Austria 1 / Wacker 2
Corners: Austria 6 / Wacker 1
Fouls: Austria 20 / Wacker 28
Offsides: Austria 3 / Wacker 1
Yellow cards:
Austria: 2 (Federer, 44./foul; N. Mayer, 56./foul)
Wacker: 3 (M. Wildauer, 51./foul; Wörgetter, 57./foul; R. Wildauer, 61./foul)
Salzburg-Maxglan, MyPhone-Austria-Stadion, 1300 spectators
Ref: Dragan Jovanovic; Assistants: Nusret Mutlu, Heinz Frühwirth
