Around 600 Austria Salzburg fans made the trip to Saalfelden to contribute to an official total gate of 1600. On a cool autumn afternoon Austria Salzburg failed to take advantage of a supposedly weakened Saalfelden line-up and bags of early dominance, ultimately falling for two sucker punches late in the game and the taking home a valuable lesson about the relativity of time. 2-0 to FC Saalfelden.What turned out to be a bad day at the office started badly, stayed relatively bad, got absolutely appalling and ended at the bottom of a beer glass at 3:30 in the morning. After keeping to my side of the bargain, arriving at the pick-up point with almost German accuracy at exactly ten past three I was reminded that Austria, in terms of timekeeping, is more southern European than it thinks. When an Austrian says; ‘I’ll be there at exactly ten past three’, the word ‘exactly’ is a brittle and fairly relative concept. This time 15 minutes late I got a call to pick Lorenz up (to make sure he didn’t drive to Tyrol this time) and go to the car park at the Austria ground.
By the time we got in Drax’s underpowered Volvo we were already half an hour behind schedule. So not having learned any of the lessons of two weeks ago we decided to cut across Germany again, this time with 25 bhp less and a psychotically nervous non-male driver in front of us who seemed hell-bent on undercutting the speed limit by up to 50% and braking at every bend in the road until ten minutes before Saalfelden. Saalfelden am Steinernen Meer translates relatively badly to ‘Hall Fields on the Ocean of Stones’, which sounds very spaced out!
Of course, if you know the area, you know were the ground is – if you don’t, you don’t. We didn’t so we didn’t. It’s one thing putting a sign up at the roundabout to advertise the game, but it would have been relatively helpful to put an arrow under it telling people which exit to take. No arrow, no other signs, people at the garage sent us to the wrong ground and even when we finally got to the car park there was nobody to direct us to the ground, so like half of the crowd we ended up walking through a cosy little housing estate and just as we were thinking of turning back down to the only Serbian orthodox church in Austria, a building which looked to have been beamed into Saalfelden directly from a church showroom in Belgrade, we caught a glimpse of the other people on the way to the game.
The ground itself is another rural monument to large-scale landscape gardening with a clubhouse seemingly for locals only and on the other side a big tin shed grandstand in a ghastly 70s steelworks brown. The Austria section was squeezed between the tennis courts and the pitch with a total of two cheap and unstable-looking portaloos for 600 bladders. Having raced to the game we realised we needn’t have bothered as the game seemed to kick off a few minutes late anyway. Somehow nobody in Saalfelden was interested in guiding us to the game, or letting us into their clubhouse or grandstand, and now we were here, getting the game going didn’t seem to be high up the agenda either; although start it did.
In the first ten minutes Austria Salzburg had most of the ball and were combining well. Although there was a lot of action going forward there were no 100% scoring opportunities and after a while a pattern began to emerge. While the Austria kept on rolling forward and moving the ball around, Saalfelden were happy to slow the game down, break the rhythm, and every minor knock or dead ball or free kick took wasted tens of seconds. Most of the Saalfelden attacks were ambushes that also followed a simple pattern: pass in the back of the defence – player runs on – diagonal pass – shot. Saalfelden was the first team we had encountered that was no prepared to play football on our terms.
Saalfelden’s Tony Chilenum did a great job of making Cavic’s life hell and stopping the service from that side and to be honest the best player on the pitch wasn’t one of ours. Maybe he was just having a good day, but Saalfelden’s Arnold Benedek was starting to make everybody nervous with his amazing pace, step-overs and nutmegs. Every trick he tried seemed to come off.
Though Austria had enjoyed the lion’s share of possession, Saalfelden had closed up shop at the back and captain Wolfgang Kraker continued to frustrate the fans and players by wasting time taking dead balls. The stop-start therapy was beginning to get on people’s nerves; ours at least. This did not seem to bother the referee though and by half time Austria Salzburg were starting to look a bit confused and needed to reshuffle.
At half time we went down to the other end of the pitch to the goal we were going to score in – or so we thought. Time is a relative concept, they say, but it’s absolutely imperative for a referee to be on the pitch when the game starts. After getting a beer and waiting, and waiting, and waiting…. the referee and linesmen finally came out onto the pitch although the players had been out there for about five minutes. God knows what the ref had been doing, but there was lots of sarcastic applause when he finally shot out of the changing rooms.
After a few minutes we noticed Cavic had lost his marker who now had other duties, and Nico Mayer had disappeared to be replaced by Bernd Winkler. I guess the notion was – take off a midfielder and add a support striker, but instead the problems seemed to mount. As the Austria players began to run at the defence instead of passing through, there was an increase in the number of balls lost to the defenders which were quickly turned into counter attacks. There were chances, but we hit the post, Milic scuffed after getting into a good shooting position, Schleindl got in behind the defence but couldn’t find an executor.
As the frustration began to build the logic of such situation demands that just when you need it the least, shit happens. On the edge of the Saalfelden penalty area the star of the season so far, Lubo Neubauer, pulled up clasping the back of his leg and 1200 eyes (that’s more or less 600 people) rolled up into the back of their heads. The immediate layman’s diagnosis was a torn muscle and whatever it was we can only wish Lubo the best as I guess he will be out of action for a few weeks at least.
With Mayer off at half time, Neubauer stretchered off on 67 minutes to be replaced by Mario Schleindl, and Kopleder on for Toni Feldinger on 70 minutes, Austria Salzburg now lacked the midfield to craft real openings and with five strikers it was sledgehammer tactics. The lack of cogency in midfield became immediately apparent and suddenly Saalfelden were interested in playing football. Yet another ping pong though midfield and Peter Zehentmayer got the better of Alex Trappl to put the hosts ahead and take the horrible tin roof of the horrible, ugly grandstand.
Now Saalfelden were in their element. They had broken down our game, niggled, procrastinated and frustrated, and now with no midfield to deal with the sledgehammer was a very clumsy means of stealing jewels. So we hammered away and Saalfelden caught us on the break again and again, Benedek tearing into a now overworked defence with his funny but very effective dance. The goalie wasted some more time, Chilenum decided he was injured and would have to lie down on the pitch for two minutes, the players started to discuss with the ref. who wasn’t interested. On 89 minutes Benedek finally put the game beyond doubt getting on the end of yet another diagonal ball behind the defence to put Saalfelden two up.
The horrible tin roof shot up in the air again as Hall Field in the Ocean of Stones experienced its best day since the introduction of the sun dial; even the scraggy kids behind the landscaped embankment were having a laugh – so obviously a number fools from our sector thought it might help matters if they stormed the pitch. From my vantage point it was other Austria fans who pulled back the insurgents. The security staff in their de rigueur bin man vests seemed to need eons before they finally decided to do something. Is time relative or is it our perception of time? Anyway, a stupid and unnecessary interlude.
Suddenly the ref realised that we had had enough time, or stoppages now also count as playing time, and he simply blew up for full time. As the game had started late, the second half started late, there was no stadium clock (no stadium either) and Saalfelden had only actively played three minutes of football it seemed almost ridiculous to play a full ninety minutes in the face of so much relativity. Once all the kafuffle had died down and it turned out that there had been more smoke than fire we embarked on an unbelievable odyssey of alcoholic excess which took us from Saalfelden, an ocean of stones at the edge of oblivion, past a full scale model of a Serbian orthodox church, across the endless steppes of temporal void, to a place call bed!
Goodnight everybody!
FC Pinzgau Saalfelden – SV Austria Salzburg 2-0 (0-0)
Austria Salzburg played with:
Trappl; Urbanek, Schmidt, Pecaranin, Milic; Rottensteiner, Neubauer (77. Schleindl), Federer, Mayer (46. Winkler), Feldinger (70. Kopleder); Cavic
Goals:
1-0: Zehentmayr (73.)
2-0: Benedek (89.)
Shots total: Saalfelden 11 / Austria 20
Shots on target: Saalfelden 6 / Austria 2
Shots blocked: Saalfelden 1 / Austria 7
Corners: Saalfelden 0 / Austria 8
Fouls: Saalfelden 19 / Austria 23
Offsides: Saalfelden 10 / Austria 4
Yellow cards:
Saalfelden: 2 (Blaickner, 16./foul; Zehentmayr, 52./foul)
Austria: 3 (Schmidt, 63./foul; Rottensteiner, 65./unsporting behaviour; Schleindl, 82./foul)
Saalfelden, Sportplatz Bürgerau, 1600 spectators
SR: Martin Angermann; Assistenten: Rupert Feldbacher, Christian Rigler
