Football Austria has its dream final in the cup. Sturm followed Rapid into the final with a 1-0 win over LASK. The country’s two largest football clubs will play out the title on April 30th. For the first time since 2018, Salzburg won’t win the cup title – and like back then, it can be SK Sturm celebrating the trophy. And if the final on April 30th is as intense as the semifinals between Sturm and LASK – it would be a more than just worthy final.
The fact that the semi-final duel between Sturm and LASK had started 30 minutes later due to a medical emergency didn’t do the game bad. From the beginning it was back and forth. The first dangerous ball flew through the Linz penalty area in the first minute of the game, followed by two shots from LASK (4′, 5′) and then Emanuel Emegha tested Alexander Schlager (5′) for the first time. Both teams did not stay in midfield, depth was the declared goal. Sturm sought this through the speed of Emegha, LASK relied on the footballing skills of Robert Zulj, who gave Grazers headaches time and time again.
Comment: Success is not the same as success
Linz were also the better team for long stretches of the first half. Storm coach Christian Ilzer repeatedly asked his team to be more compact. And he obviously found the right words in the dressing room. In the second round, Sturm clearly dictated what happened. The ball ran better, the counter-pressing grabbed and the LASK hardly came into its own.
The strong Tomi Horvat was then the first to put more than one pinprick. In the 68th minute, the Slovenian drew irresistibly from the right inwards and shot his left foot into the far post. A dream goal. It stayed with this one. “It’s a very good feeling and I’m very happy that we won,” said the gold goalscorer. “I had space, I wanted to shoot and it was a good shot. I always work on that in training.”
The fact that nothing changed in the score was partly due to the fact that Zulj did not hit the ball properly on his own and missed an excellent equalizer for Linz. And on the other hand, that Albian Ajeti found his master after a counterattack in Schlager. Sturm defended courageously, LASK could not get any noteworthy conclusion, only Zulj put a free kick into the wall from a dangerous distance shortly before the final whistle. That was it.
“It was a spectacle, especially in the first half, and a game in which both deserved the final,” said Sturm coach Christian Ilzer after the game. “The game plan wasn’t perfect, because there were also phases in which LASK was superior to us. In the end, however, we were better by Alzerl. LASK has enormous quality on the offensive and it was important to defuse it compactly. But it was the individual quality of the attacking players that made the history of this game.”
And so, like in 2018, the people of Graz can once again bring a title to Styria. At that time, the team with coach Heiko Vogel prevailed against Salzburg. Now Rapid is waiting. “Rapid vs. Sturm is definitely a final that some people in Austria wished for,” said Ilzer. It is the first time that Sturm and Hütteldorfer face each other in a final. Sturm has already won the cup title five times.