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Like Rapid and Lask, the defending champion had climbed confidently, but could still improve.
Sunday’s Austrian Cup round of 16 draw brought the successful pair Red Bull Salzburg against Rapid. The two teams met in the past two cup seasons, with Salzburg leading the way in the second round in 2019/20 and in the final in 2018/19.
LASK welcomes the Vienna city league team Elektra, Austria has to deal with Hartberg in their own stadium, Sturm faces Wacker Innsbruck in Graz.
Need for analysis despite victories
For defending champion Salzburg, coach Jesse Marsch’s expression darkened several times in the first half of the 3-0 win at St. Pölten. Three days before the Champions League duel with Lok Moscow, the American sometimes lacked proper concentration. In the end, however, Marsch was as positive as his colleagues at LASK and Rapid.
If the Linz team beat Wörgl 3-0, Hütteldorfer also defeated a regional league team in a 5-1 win at Wiener Neustadt. On Thursday night the roles in the Europa League will be reversed. Rapid is like an outsider at home against Arsenal, as are the Linzers, who meet another major caliber of the English Premier League when they play for Tottenham.
I need to speak in Salzburg
Albert Vallci did not look like a radiant winner at St. Pölten. “We are done, that was the goal. Of course there are things we still have to talk about,” said the Salzburg striker after the win over Bundesliga rivals. This caused the favorites more problems than they would have liked until half-time (0: 1) and shortly after. Due to individual errors in the defensive department, Salzburg invited Lower Austria once or another dangerously into their own penalty area.
Vallci, who benefited from an error by SKN goalkeeper Armin Gremsl when scoring his goal, called the performance in the first half of the match “naive”. Marsch saw that his team was acting “too freely.” The speech during the break should have been worth it. After switching sides, Salzburg showed the desired dominance against St. Pöltner, which was diminishing minute by minute after a long run. Patson Daka was denied a goal on several occasions, but defender Andre Ramalho was satisfied with a clean sheet. “We have always scored goals recently, the zero game was very important before the Moscow game,” said the scorer of the final score.
In hindsight, it was nothing wrong for the Salzburgers to warm up before Wednesday’s duel with Lok against an unpleasant opponent. “After the international breakup, it was important that there be resistance,” Marsch said. Of course, he did not make a comparison with the runner-up from Russia. The games are “completely different,” Marsch said.
Focus on new forces
LASK initially had an easy game in their 3-0 home win against Wörgl. The fact that the Tyrolean regional league team was able to wait until the end (Linz’s number two and three goals only fell in injury time) was due to a more passive Linz. “Wörgl is to be commended, they did their job very well. However, it is clear that now we have to analyze the second half and see what we can do even better,” emphasized Johannes Eggestein. Werder Bremen’s loan scored in LASK’s first competitive match. As an assistant, Thomas Goiginger was able to await his return.
Marcel Ritzmaier’s debut in Rapid’s dress was even better than Eggestein’s. After less than two weeks of training together, the 27-year-old midfielder didn’t seem like a foreign body and capped off a good performance with a two-two. He first showed that Rapid now has an extremely dangerous free-throw shooter in his ranks, then he threw another shot after some good game action at the Kreuzeck as well.
Apart from the 1: 1 in the meantime and a 3: 1 oversight, which almost led to the next goal, Dietmar Kühbauer was able to draw a positive balance. The momentum of three consecutive victories in competitive games must now be carried to the duel with the “Gunners.” In terms of personnel, not much will change at the Hütteldorfer, as the Burgenlander had brought out his best line-up. The most notable absentee was top scorer Taxiarchis Fountas, who returned to Vienna from the Greek national team late on Friday. Yusuf Demir was absent due to illness.
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