Marked for Habeeb Ogunneye
From our football correspondent
Crisis
Market23 Aug 2027
“I have given everything here and I need a new challenge.” The request is formal, and the relationship will never be quite the same again.
Squad23 Aug 2027
It was not about football and everybody who saw it knows that. Two men who have to play together on Saturday said things at Austria Wien this week that will take longer than a week to unsay.
Player ratings23 Aug 2027
Successful dribbles: 22. There is a particular sort of despair on a full-back's face by the seventieth minute, and it was on display.
Squad23 Aug 2027
Reinhold Ranftl falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Boardroom23 Aug 2027
The paperwork is done long before the player is. Peter Ilsanker has agreed terms to come here when his current deal runs out, which means Austria Wien have spent a summer's transfer budget on a phone call.
Squad23 Aug 2027
The manager makes an example of Illan Meslier
“If you cannot run for the shirt, somebody else will wear it.” No name was used and none was needed; every player in that room knew who it was for.
Match21 Aug 2027
Mattersburg left with the points after a 0‑1 defeat that will take some explaining on the terraces.
Boardroom23 Aug 2027
Nobody left the Austria Wien dressing room in a hurry
The door stayed shut a long time after the final whistle. What was said in there is between them; whether it worked is between them and Saturday.
Squad23 Aug 2027
“Some mornings you wake up and you are still a long way from everything you know.” It is not the football and it never was; Austria Wien are dealing with a man who wants a different country.
Back issues
From our football correspondent
Uneasy
Match22 Mar 2027
Austria Wien are in among the leaders
Position 3 and 30 points on the board. Nobody at the ground will say the word out loud yet, and everybody at the ground is thinking it.
Market22 Mar 2027
Terms are settled between the clubs and the rest is paperwork and a photograph. Around Austria Wien they have already started talking about him in the past tense.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Abubakr Barry was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Squad22 Mar 2027
Words at Austria Wien training over how hard people work
Somebody said out loud what several people had been thinking. Reinhold Ranftl is at the centre of it, and the squad will now find out whether the standard rises or the pair of them simply stop speaking.
Squad22 Mar 2027
“I never wanted to be anywhere else. There is unfinished business here.” Florian Wustinger commits to Austria Wien for another 4 years.
Squad22 Mar 2027
“I pick players who do the work. All of it.” No name was spoken; every camera still turned to Cican Stanković, and the manager let it.
From our football correspondent
Upbeat
Squad25 Jan 2027
Yussuf Poulsen was at the centre of it, and by the time it was pulled apart there were three or four others involved. Training grounds are small places and long seasons make them smaller.
Match23 Jan 2027
Ask anyone on the way out what separated the sides and you will get one name: Damion Downs. 2‑1 against RB Leipzig, and the applause at the whistle was mostly his.
Player ratings25 Jan 2027
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.96, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
The terraces25 Jan 2027
At 22 he is being sung about by people twice his age, which is an affection a signing has to earn over years and a local kid gets for turning up. It is also the hardest thing in football to live up to.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Nicolás Capaldo falls out with a teammate over standards
The oldest argument in any dressing room and the only one that is genuinely about football: one man thinks another is not putting enough in. It is also the row a manager privately does not mind having happened.
Player ratings25 Jan 2027
There is a version of this player everybody suspected was in there, and on this evidence it is. 8.02, and no argument anywhere in the ground.
Squad25 Jan 2027
Sven Ulreich gets it from the manager
“Nobody here is above being told.” It was not said with a name attached, but the dressing room can count, and so can everybody who was listening.
Squad25 Jan 2027
3 goals and a season average of 7.31. Form like that gets noticed well beyond this town.
Player ratings25 Jan 2027
7 attempts, none of them in. He got into the right places all afternoon, which is the hard part, and did the easy part badly — and that is the version of a bad day a manager can live with.