Can FC Blau-Weiß Linz get back on track in the Bundesliga after the clear 1:5 defeat at Salzburg today (5 p.m.)? Coach Gerald Scheiblehner’s team will face newly promoted GAK – and the Styrian team is hoping for the flashes of genius of an Upper Austrian in the duel with Linz: In the summer of 2023, Christian Lichtenberger, a native of Steyr, moved from Lafnitz to the Red Jackets and was promoted to the Bundesliga with the traditional Graz club in his first season. “Maybe I was the missing piece of the puzzle,” says the offensive player with a grin.
However, the missed promotion a season earlier, when Blau-Weiß prevailed in a title thriller on the very last matchday in a long-distance duel against GAK, might not have been such a bad thing for Lichtenberger’s career: “I had been in talks with GAK for a long time back then, but I can’t say whether they would have brought me directly to the Bundesliga.”
With a one-year delay, the Graz team finally managed to get promoted to the top division – Lichtenberger was one of the decisive factors in the championship team: with six goals and seven assists, the 28-year-old often made the difference.
Companion Scheiblehner
But today’s opposing coach also played a major role in the fact that the offensive player is now active in Austria’s highest league: Blau-Weiß coach Scheiblehner brought Dribblanski from lower house club Dietach to the third-highest league in 2017 – at the time still as coach of Vorwärts Steyr. With Steyr, he managed to get promoted to the second division before he left his homeland for the first time in 2019: “I’ve always said that I’ll never leave home. But then Lafnitz offered me my first professional contract and I thought to myself: I just have to try it now.”
Lichtenberger is particularly looking forward to seeing his former sponsor again: “I always got on well with Scheibi, he helped me to get to where I am now.” Blau-Weiß could also have served as an ideal role model for GAK: “I think they have learned a lot, including from our early days as a newly promoted team. GAK does not make the mistake of attacking too high, they are more stable than we were in our first Bundesliga appearances. They are a newly promoted team to be taken very seriously,” says Blau-Weiß coach Scheiblehner.
The 47-year-old hopes that his team will also demonstrate its ability to learn today: “The game against Salzburg was an important step for our development. We have learned a lot and now we are fully focused on GAK. We are going there to win.”
An undertaking that must succeed without regular goalkeeper Nicolas Schmid: The transfer of the 27-year-old to English second division club FC Portsmouth is in the final negotiations, he did not make the away trip. Substitute Andreas Lukse will represent him in Graz today.
