On the fourth day of the championship group, there was a top game between SK Sturm Graz and FK Austria Wien. The Styrians were able to go into this key game with a lot of self-confidence, as they recently celebrated two wins in a row. With the third success in a row, you would secure second place and keep Austria at a distance. Of course, the violets had something to complain about and came to Graz with a series of seven unbeaten games. They not only wanted to set a new club record, but also to draw level with the Styrians in the table and move up to second place.
Austria surprises with system change
In previous encounters between the two teams, the Viennese have had the upper hand overall and have remained undefeated in the games so far. This was partly due to the fact that the “Violets” came up with a good tactical concept and thus pulled the plug on the Styrians. Therefore, one was obviously curious to see whether Austria coach Schmid would come up with something again to prologue this series. In the last few weeks, the violets have mostly refrained from making changes and instead trusted their 4-2-3-1. It was different against Graz for the first time this calendar year and the formation changed. The back four became a five-man defense and a 5-3-2 system was used. Central defender Schoissengeyr came into the team, while Grünwald and Jukic had to sit on the bench.
With Martins, Huskovic and Handl, however, Austria also had to accept failures that narrowed the room for maneuver somewhat. For example, not a single defender took his place on the bench, which explains the personnel situation somewhat. What was the goal with the change? On the one hand, the dual leadership certainly played a role, with which you have done well in previous duels. On the other hand, however, also superficially the respect for storms, where one saw the opportunity to systematically and completely adapt to the opponent for the first time. The question is, of course, whether this is necessary in this form, since you are in good shape yourself and are characterized by stability. A system change always means different processes and automatisms, which means that structural deterioration is always an issue.
In principle, one tried to choose an active approach with the five-man chain and not just stand deep. When Sturm had the ball, there was a situational attacking pressing and both wing-backs attacked the full-backs deep in the opposing half to gain access. The centerpiece of the defensive plan was certainly the centre, where the pass paths to the center were blocked with the double attack and a massive block was formed with the three central defenders and central midfielders to completely block and deliver this region. Sturm should be neutralized with their usual diamond formation in the center, providing defensive stability to control the space between the lines.
Sturm surprised Austria this time
However, storm coach Christian Ilzer, who was certainly particularly motivated by the season’s record so far, threw a spanner in the works for the Viennese. So Sturm also took Austria’s strategy to heart and also adjusted to the opponent even more specifically. The Styrians did not use the usual 4-4-2 diamond pattern, but instead used a 4-2-3-1 – the usual formation of the violets. Heads were already burning eagerly before the game and this mutated into a chess game between the two coaches. Playmaker Kiteishivli made a comeback in the starting eleven for Graz, while Sarkaria and Jantscher came down the wings and were protected by Stankovic and Prass on the double six.
What was Grazer’s plan? It looked as if Austria’s five-man chain had been anticipated. This could be seen from the hosts’ pressing formation, which seemed perfectly synchronized and well rehearsed. As soon as the Violets tried to play out from behind, striker Höjlund took care of goalkeeper Pentz and central defender Mühl, the two wings around the two half-backs and the three central midfielders secured the center and took care of their opponents. This procedure can be seen in the first picture:
Austria in the build-up game, Sturm receives the Viennese from a clear 4-2-3-1 and tries to exert pressure early on and disturb the guests to make the build-up and transition game more difficult.
As a result, Sturm had a clear assignment and could ensure quick access to the ball and opponents. Austria found it incredibly difficult to move the playground equipment and find suitable solutions. They came up with something by placing Schoissengeyr quite far to the outside (as can be seen at the top of the picture) and trying to lure Grazer to the left via Pentz, in order to then shift to the right side against the displacement movement. However, that hardly worked and you could not gain a real advantage from it. Rather, Austria’s build-up game was mostly played in the width, or either served the strikers with passes along the sideline, who already had a defender in the back. Alternatively, there were long balls, which were also mostly lost.
Of course, that was extremely transparent and not difficult for Graz to defend. Due to their defensive approach, Austria had a very deep formation, which gave the strikers little support. Of course, the attackers could have secured the balls better to enable their colleagues to have offspring. However, that’s easier said than done when you’re constantly outnumbered against multiple opponents after difficult passes. You can expect something like that constantly from a Lewandowski or Haaland, in the Austrian Bundesliga it will be rather difficult.
Desolate purple offensive game
The result was that Austria had no rhythm at all with the ball. If you won the ball, you only played wide, but as soon as you went forward, the bad pass followed and the ball was lost quickly. The positional play didn’t seem balanced, you hardly had any presence up front and that was completely at the expense of the ball possession game. You didn’t have a single chance in the first half, which speaks volumes. It wasn’t that Sturm didn’t offer anything, but even if things got dangerous at first, Austria stood in their own way and nipped the situation in the bud.
On the other hand, as already mentioned, Sturm was very well adjusted against the ball and extremely aggressive, especially in counter-pressing. The center was also designed very tightly with the 4-2-3-1 and the wings moved in far to create a majority here. As a result, after losing the ball, you were usually in a very good position to go straight into winning the ball again and to prevent the Viennese from switching. You can see that quite well in the next picture:
An exemplary sequence of the first round: Austria wins the ball, Sturm contracts and condenses the space, the guests have de facto no passing station and cannot find a way out of this “counterpressing knot”, because you are very narrow yourself and only effective has two pass stations on the offensive. The result is a rapid purple ball loss.
Here, Sturm simply turned the tables and steered the opponent’s enormous central focus against himself. For the Grazers, this meant that they didn’t have to worry about Austria’s switching game. They offered a good remaining defense against the two strikers and the midfielders usually did such a good job that the Vienna strikers were hardly put in good situations with adequate passes. The match plan flew almost completely around the ears of the guests and the result was an offensive that didn’t achieve anything and was unrecognizable compared to the last few weeks.
One could, of course, commendably mention here that Austria at least allowed little themselves and defended well on the defensive – which was certainly the case. However, if you de facto limit eight field players almost exclusively to defending and leave the game completely to the opponent, this is not surprising given the resources invested and it would be an indictment if you allowed the opponent to fireworks of chance. But of course, how to win a game with this approach and without an attacking plan remains a mystery. In the initial phase, it was certainly the case that Sturm clearly set the tone, while Austria gained more security towards the end, at least against the ball. Sturm had the only chances, with Pentz thwarting a big chance with a great reflex. So it went with the 0:0 in the cabin.
“Violet” doesn’t change anything and will be punished
After the weak performance of the guests in the first half, changes were actually unavoidable at half-time, as one could not rely on an offensive game to “consolidate” a 0-0 lead. However, Austria coach Schmid refrained from doing so and rather trusted that small adjustments would make it easier to implement. That should turn out to be false hope relatively quickly and Grazer only needed a few minutes to take the lead. The Viennese did not defend well after a standard situation and after a great lob from Kiteishvili, Captain Stankovic scored to make it 1-0.
Gradually, the seriousness of the situation became clear to Austria, but the reaction to the deficit was a sobering one. A triple change was made, but only changed position-wise, but structurally nothing at all. Of course, the question arises as to why you still have so much respect for your opponent even after falling behind than you increase the risk and break the five-man chain. So the resources were distributed relatively evenly and you were only slightly higher than the team, but still had too little presence in the front rows.
Only with the last change in the final quarter of an hour did they switch here, but by then it was already too late and the initial spark was missing. It almost happened with Austria’s first real chance when the conspicuous substitute Vucic failed alone in front of the goalkeeper. This prompted storm coach Ilzer to return to the tried-and-tested system with the diamond and to bring the lead over time with the increased stability. That finally worked and Sturm got the three points.
Conclusion
It was a sobering performance by Austria, which disappointed almost across the board. Of course, one could now argue that expectations have recently increased with the good results, but that would be a rather shortened presentation. You showed too much respect for your opponent even before the game and were so focused on thwarting their game that you completely forgot to advance your own game. Everything seemed stable and well coordinated against the ball as usual, but here you have to ask yourself whether it would not have been enough to invest a little less resources in the defense and, above all, not at the expense of your own offensive, which was completely idle and was unrecognizable.
In previous games, neither WAC nor Rapid have allowed many chances and the qualitative gap to Sturm is not that big to justify these measures. So Sturm has taken a big step towards the group stage in the European Cup and they are now six points ahead of the violets. With the “double” against Salzburg, Austria now has two extremely difficult tasks ahead of them, where winning a point would be a surprise. Here one can only hope for the violets that this time the match plan works better and that they don’t show too much respect. However, this would be more appropriate against the round of 16 in the Champions League.
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