Red Bull Salzburg ends season with draw against Austria Wien, sets eyes on Europe

In the final game of the championship group and of the season, Austria Wien, with German coach Michael Wimmer, drew 1-1 at home against Austrian Bundesliga champions Red Bull Salzburg. As a result, the “Veilchen” were no longer able to displace arch-rival Rapid Vienna from fourth place despite their 2-1 defeat at Austria Klagenfurt – and now have to “detention” in order to possibly still be there in Europe next season. Fifth in the table, Austria will play on Thursday, June 8th and Sunday, June 11th in the fight for a place in the Conference League qualifiers in the playoff against the winner of the game Wolfsberger AC vs. Austria Lustenau, which will take place on Monday, June 5th , 7 p.m., takes place on stage.

Two rounds before the Bundesliga final, the “Red Bulls” had crowned themselves as champions for the tenth time in a row and, thanks to a penalty goal by Sekou Koita (30th), remained unbeaten against the Viennese for the 16th time in a row. The Mozart townsfolk also said goodbye to a short summer vacation after only losing one season. Andreas Gruber gave the Austria fans hope of a win in a dramatic finish with the equalizer in the 90th minute, but it wasn’t enough. RB coach Matthias Jaissle had called up the best available eleven in view of a long list of injuries, only striker Benjamin Sesko fell out at short notice with a muscle injury and thus missed his farewell game in front of around 13,600 spectators – he is now switching to the old and new DFB Cup winners RB Leipzig.

“It was a hard-fought game, especially in the closing stages,” said Jaissle. “We failed to close the sack, had a good structure and dominance, but missed a lot of transition situations. The fact that we only lost once this season speaks for the team and the consistency. That cannot be taken for granted.” In the end, Salzburg has a seven-point lead over runner-up Sturm Graz, who celebrated a 2-0 win over LASK. SV Ried has to be relegated from the Bundesliga again. The best RB goalscorer is Sesko with 16 goals, Rapids Guido Burgstaller (1st place) scored 21 goals.

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