Austrian Bundesliga 2019/20: Austria Vienna vs RB Salzburg – tactical analysis

The 2012/13 season was the last time a team than RB Salzburg had won the Austrian Bundesliga as Austria Vienna under their coach Peter Stöger ended that campaign in first place. Now, seven years later, Austria Vienna is far away from the race for the championship as they sat ahead of this match in the seventh position. After this game, there are only two games left until the 12 clubs of the Austrian Bundesliga get divided into two groups and each team battles for the championship and not to be relegated respectively. Ahead of this clash, Austria Vienna sat six points behind Hartberg who are in the sixth position, and so the last place in which it was possible to be part of the championship round.

On the other side, RB Salzburg won after the return from the winter break just their first match against Amstetten who are in Austrias second division, then lost against LASK Linz and Eintracht Frankfurt in the UEFA Europa League. Because of the defeat against LASK, they were ahead of this match with one point behind the league leaders Linz and due to the 4-1 loss against the Bundesliga club Frankfurt, the chance to get into the last round of 16 in the UEL which is not that big anymore. Still, it would be wrong to say that Salzburg are in a crisis, but one has to admit that their performances arent as dominant as we were used to.

In this tactical analysis, well look at both teams tactics and explain why RB Salzburg were once more not able to get a win as the game ended 2-2.

Lineups

The home side used a 4-2-3-1 formation in this game with Patrick Pentz in goal and the back four was made of Andreas Poulsen, Erik Palmer-Brown (on loan from Manchester City), Michael Madl, and Florian Klein. The captain Alexander Grünwald and Aleksandar Borković were the two defensive midfielders in front of the back four while the number 10 was Dominik Fitz. The wingers were Manprit Sarkaria and Benedikt Pichler while Christoph Monschein was the lone man up front.

Jesse Marsch lined his team up in a 4-2-2-2 and 4-4-2 (with narrow positioned wingers) respectively. Cican Stankovic was the goalkeeper while the central defence was made of Maximilian Wöber and Jérôme Onguéné. The full-backs were Andreas Ulmer and Albert Vallci. The central midfield got occupied by Majeed Ashimeru and Mohamed Camara and the more advanced midfielders were Masaya Okugawa and Mergim Berisha. Up front, we had the duo of Patson Daka and Hee-chan Hwang as the two strikers once more, both of whom were until now in every single game since Erling Haaland’s move to Borussia Dortmund.

Salzburg’s different build-up patterns

In the first fixtures after the winter break against Amstetten and against LASK last week, the team of Marsch played with a back three while against Frankfurt and in this match, we saw a system with a back four. In any case, they had neither Enock Mwepu nor Zlatko Junuzović in the central midfield who are usually the first-choice players of Marsch in this position. Instead, he wanted to give them a break ahead of the second leg against Eintracht Frankfurt.

Still, it was quite interesting to watch Salzburg during the build-up since they permanently changed their positionings during the first stage of the attacks. While Austria Vienna mostly put pressure about at them at the height of the half-way line or a few yards higher, Salzburg had usually time and space to circulate their ball in their own half. Of course, in some situations, Austria pushed forward and used a higher pressing, but this was just occasionally as mainly they defended in a mid-block which transformed in a low block when Salzburg were able to get forward as we’ll see later in this tactical analysis.

During the first phase of