Three matchdays have been played in the Austrian Bundesliga since the restart and the two teams Hartberg and Sturm Graz couldn’t be in more different situations. Most fans and experts expected ahead of this season that Hartberg would be among the clubs who have to fight against the relegation, but they are part of the championship group and besides, they were in the comfortable fifth position ahead of this game and got six points out of their last three games. On the other side, Sturm Graz lost all of their first three games after the restart and are in horrible form.
Furthermore, their coach Nestor El Maestro (was already the assistant coach at the Bundesliga side Schalke 04) received a red card in the last match against RB Salzburg which means he will have to watch the upcoming four league games (including this one against Hartberg) from the stands.
In this tactical analysis, we will look at the tactics of both sides and discuss the reasons for the 2-1 win of Sturm Graz in this derby of Styria.
Lineups
Markus Schopp used a 3-4-1-2 formation with René Swete between the sticks and the back three consisted out of Thomas Rotter, Felix Luckeneder, and Christian Klem. Tobias Kainz and Bakary Nimaga were the defensive midfielders and had Rajko Rep in front of them. Andreas Lienhart and Amadou Dante played in the wide-areas and Dario Tadić partnered up with Jodel Dossou up front.
On the other side, Sturm Graz played in a 5-3-2/3-1-4-2 formation with Jörg Siebenhandl in goal. Ivan Ljubic, Anastasios Avlonitis, and Niklas Geyrhofer were the three central defenders while Emanuel Sakic and Stefan Hierländer were the wing-backs. Juan Domínguez was the defensive midfielder and was supported by Christoph Leitgeb and Otar Kiteishvili in the centre and Kiril Despodov (loanee from Serie A side Cagliari Calcio) joined Kevin Friesenbichler in the highest line.
Hartberg’s domination in the first half
During the first 45 minutes of this match, Hartberg were the better side and dominated the match. Especially during the opening 30 minutes, the team of Schopp were extremely dominant and patient during the build-up. In this first part of the tactical analysis, we will look at the period of possession of Hartberg in the first half. An additional reason for their domination in the first half is also the weak performance of Sturm Graz when they were in possession, but we will look at this in the second section of this tactical analysis.
Basically, Hartberg tried to build up all of their attacks with short passes from the back. The three defenders split wide with Luckeneder in the centre who organised together with the deeper central midfielder Nimaga and the goalkeeper Swete the first stage of the build-up.
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