[ad_1]
The Austrian national team began preparing for the first international game of the year on Friday in Norway. Only rookie Adrian Grbic was absent from the first training session in Klagenfurt. The French legionnaire had only arrived at the team’s camp in Pörtschach in the afternoon. The result of his crown test was not yet available at night, it should follow on Tuesday.
The compulsory tests were negative for the rest of the players and coaches. So nothing got in the way of the first session on the training ground next to the Wörthersee stadium. “We are very, very happy,” said team principal Franco Foda before the start of training. Even the continuous rain in Carinthia couldn’t hurt it.
Foda brought the players on his team together for a course for the first time in more than nine months. “In the first match we reviewed the qualification for the European Championship,” explained the German. The year before, the ÖFB team qualified for a continental tournament for the second time in a row, despite a false start. “We also remember the principles of the game that distinguish us.”
Franco Foda: “I want our game to pass”
By the time the Norway game is played, the red-white-red team should have internalized this again. “The first and foremost thing is that our game develops,” Foda said. Even the prominent absentee, from David Alaba to Marko Arnautovic, Valentino Lazaro and Konrad Laimer, shouldn’t change a thing. “In the situation we find ourselves in, there are always flaws,” Foda said. The opportunity for new players is now there.
Grbic is one of them. The forward was still in action for his new club after his € 10 million transfer from Clermont Foot to FC Lorient on Sunday in French Ligue 1 (0-2 against AS St. Etienne). The other two offensive players who were able to debut in the ÖFB team at the start of the Nations League, Christoph Baumgartner (1899 Hoffenheim) and Christoph Monschein (Austria Vienna), participated in the first session in Klagenfurt.
[ad_2]
