After a long break, the Austrian Bundesliga finally returned. The German Bundesliga was the first European League to restart and last week also Austrian football celebrated its comeback with the final of the ÖFB Cup between RB Salzburg and Austria Lustenau which the team of Jesse Marsch easily won with 5-0 and therefore they were able to get the first trophy of this season.
Now, Salzburg logically wanted a good start in the Austrian Bundesliga to get themselves in a good position to also win the league. In Austria, the 12 teams get divided into two groups after the opening 22 games and then they fight for the championship and against the relegation respectively. Also, the points of all teams get halved. Due to that, after the opening 22 matchdays LASK wasnt anymore six points ahead of RB Salzburg, but only three. Also, due to their infringement (as they made a normal training match even though this wasnt allowed) they lost six points and due to that ahead of the restart RB Salzburg had 24 points (first position), LASK Linz collected 21 points (second position), Rapid Vienna collected 20 points (third position) and Wolfsberger AC had 19 points (fourth position).
Considering this, the match between RB Salzburg and Rapid Vienna was for both teams extremely important. In this tactical analysis, we will look at the tactics of both teams, how they changed throughout the game and discuss the reasons for the 2-0 victory of RB Salzburg.
Line-ups
Both teams switched their systems throughout the first half. While Rapid stuck to about the same formation, they had to make several changes due to injuries, RB Salzburg changed formation in the 36th minute which influenced both teams’ tactics.
Marsch lined his team up in a 4-4-2 formation with Cican Stankovic in goal and the back four consisted out of Andreas Ulmer, Maximilian Wöber, André Ramalho and Albert Vallci. Majeed Ashimeru and Enock Mwepu were the central midfielders and the wings got occupied by Zlatko Junuzović and Dominik Szoboszlai. Upfront Hee-chan Hwang and Patson Daka were the two strikers. The only change compared to the ÖFB Cup final was that Noah Okafor was on the bench and Mwepu started instead of him. Also, in the final Junuzović was in the centre and Okafor played on the wing.
On the other side, Dietmar Kühbauer used a mixture of a 3-4-3 (5-2-3) and a 3-5-2 (5-3-2) formation with Richard Strebinger between the sticks. Maximilian Hofmann, Filip Stojković and Christopher Dibon were the three centre-backs while Kelvin Arase and Maximilian Ullmann completed the back five. Dejan Ljubicic, Dejan Petrovič and Stefan Schwab were the midfielders while Christoph Knasmüllner joined the Greek striker Taxiarchis Fountas in the highest line. Schwab was the one who either played in the highest line or dropped a bit deeper and due to that, they switched between 3-4-3 and 3-5-2. However, Dibon got subbed off after about two minutes due to an injury and Mario Sonnleitner replaced him. Only 25 minutes later Sonnleitner also left the field due to an injury and due to that Ljubicic became the central man of the back five and Srdjan Grahovac who came on for Sonnleitner played instead of Ljubicic in the central midfield. Also, they needed to finish the game with 10 men since Thomas Murg who came on in the 72nd together with two other players (Rapid Vienna used all of their five possible substitutions) had also to go off the pitch due to an injury.
Salzburg’s build-up before the switch of system
Basically, we saw in the opening phase of the game what we could have expected as Salzburg dominated the match, tried to control the game and used their high press to give Rapid nearly no chance to have longer periods of possession. Additionally, the early injury of Dibon also didn’t help Rapid, but overall, they performed well and also didn’t just sit back deeper. Kühbauer’s side either put pressure on RB Salzburg higher up the pitch as we will see later in this section of the tactical analysis, or sat back a bit deeper and pressed at about the half-way line or a few yards deeper.
On the other side, Salzburg’s full-backs didn’t push as high as they normally do and stayed during the first phase a bit deeper. Ramalho and Wöber were responsible for the circulation of the ball during the first stage of the build-up and got supported by Mwepu and Ashimeru. The two central midfielders either stayed both in the centre in front of the centre-backs or occasionally Mwepu came deeper to create a back three. Szoboszlai and Junuzović were positioned in the half-spaces while Daka and Hwang stayed narrow. All these aspects can be seen in the graphic below.
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