2023-11-24 22:23:46
Bundesliga league leaders Red Bull Salzburg will host fourth-placed Hartberg in the top game of the 15th round on Saturday (5 p.m.). Meanwhile, LASK wants to get back on the road to success following the 0-2 defeat once morest Blau-Weiß Linz in the home game once morest WSG Tirol. Sturm Graz is facing a mandatory win once morest bottom-placed Austria Lustenau.
The fact that Hartberg are so far ahead comes as no surprise to Salzburg coach Gerhard Struber. Nevertheless, they want to “hunt for points in this final phase,” said the 46-year-old before the top game of the 15th round.
Salzburg won twelve of 13 league duels with Hartberg; on December 14th there was a 2-2 draw in Hartberg. However, the Styrians are currently only five points behind the Goliath. In the Cup round of 16, the favorite only prevailed on penalties away from home three weeks ago. “But that was a knockout game, a different situation,” said Struber. “Conversely, we solved the first game in Hartberg confidently,” he said, referring to the 5-1 win in the fourth round. Since then, TSV has “developed well. They have a strong game and define themselves through possession of the ball.”
Hartberg coach Markus Schopp said that the effort in the two games once morest the “Bulls” was not rewarded. “We played a really good game in the cup and for a long time in the championship. But we lost and were eliminated from the cup.”
Regarding Saturday, he thinks “that we are really well prepared and my team is not going to Salzburg to enjoy the moment, but to play a good game.” If we manage to “do what we did for the most part in the first two games on the pitch for 90 minutes, then it might be a wonderful day for TSV Hartberg.”
At LASK, before the home game once morest WSG Tirol, the concept of a mandatory victory is in the air, although according to coach Thomas Sageder there are no “small opponents”. “It’s important for us that we’re extremely efficient. In a game like this, it helps that we might score a quick goal. And it’s important that we don’t get impatient.” The first leg ended in a 1-1 draw in Innsbruck in August. The head coach of the athletes explained that they had “de facto beaten themselves”. “It’s important to us that something like this doesn’t happen to us once more,” he said, referring to several games of this kind so far.
The Tyroleans, who were in eleventh place, got their second win of the season in the 14th round with a 5-1 win once morest Altach, their first since September 17th. Now the WSG awaits a more difficult task in its first appearance in the new Linz stadium. This time the squad will also include Bror Blume, who returns to head coach Thomas Silberberger’s squad following a lengthy bone edema and might celebrate his comeback following almost six months of injury.
For Silberberger one thing is fundamentally clear: “We need a perfect day to get something in Linz.” What made him positive before the trip to Upper Austria was that he had almost everyone on board. “The only one who is not fit is Valentino Müller with his Achilles tendon injury,” said the Wattener’s long-term coach.
Meanwhile, bottom-placed Austria Lustenau comes to second-placed Sturm Graz in a serious condition. Sturm coach Christian Ilzer still had warning words for his team following the international break. “Lustenau has a new coaching team, that’s a bit of a ‘blind flight’,” said the 46-year-old before the duel with the still winless Vorarlbergers. They actually have to hope for the trainer effect.
Despite the dreary situation, Lustenau’s interim coach and sports director Alexander Schneider are certainly able to spread “good energy and a spirit of optimism”, “new impulses and new effects” to the chronically unsuccessful Austria, said Ilzer. “It won’t be an easy game once morest an opponent who has quality thanks to the individual players and who acts very well on the counterattack. We have to be very sharp once morest the ball.”
In Lustenau, coach Markus Mader’s almost two-and-a-half-year era came to an end at the beginning of the international break, and sports director Schneider also takes over as coach on an interim basis. “In addition to strenuous training sessions, it was important to us that we also worked a lot with our heads,” emphasized the German. “The players had to clear their heads and rekindle their desire to play football. The goal was to go out on the pitch with a certain amount of self-confidence despite the difficult situation and to give everything in themselves to get themselves out of the mess to pull.”
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