Austrian Bundesliga 2019/20: WSG Tirol vs Admira

This weekend we saw the final matchday of the season in the Austrian Bundesliga. In Austria’s highest division one team get relegated at the end of the season to the second tier. Ahead of this weekend, WSG Tirol sat in the 12^th and last position with 15 points while Admira were ahead of them with 17 points. Since Mattersburg already collected 21 points, it was clear that the direct clash between WSG Tirol and Admira would decide which team would go down. In the light of this, the side of Thoams Silberberger needed the three points to stay in the Austrian Bundesliga and Admira wanted to avoid that.

In this tactical analysis, we will talk about the tactics of WSG Tirol and Admira and additionally outline the reasons why this important clash in the relegation battle ended 0-0 which means that WSG Tirol will play in the second Austrian division.

Lineups

The home team went with their usual 4-4-2 formation, with the captain Ferdinand Oswald between the sticks. The back four was made out of Florian Buchacher, David Gugganig, Bruno Soares and Sandro Neurauter. Thanos Petsos and Michael Svoboda were the central midfielders and Clemens Walch provided width together with Dino Kovačec. Upfront the two strikers were Stefan Maierhofer and Zlatko Dedič.

On the other side, Zvonimir Soldo lined his team up in a 4-1-4-1 formation. Andreas Leitner was the goalkeeper, and in front of him, he had four defenders in Marcus Maier, Christoph Schösswendter, Emanuel Aiwu and Pascal Petlach. Markus Lackner was the defensive midfielder and was supported in the middle of the pitch by the Norwegian Morten Hjulmand and Roman Kerschbaum. Erwin Hoffer and Muhammed-Cham Saracevic were the wingers and Markus Pink was the central striker.

Tirol’s idea in possession

Even though the game ended 0-0, we saw throughout the game several chances and especially WSG Tirol missed some huge goalscoring opportunities. They were the team which dominated possession, while Admira mostly sat back deeper and started to put pressure on the ball-carrier of Tirol, at about the height of the half-way line or occasionally a few yards higher.

In this first part of this tactical analysis, we will look at the tactics and basic idea of WSG Tirol, and additionally discuss the defensive behaviour of Admira. In the second section, we will have a more detailed look at the different roles of Dedič and Maierhofer, while in the last paragraph I’ll outline the reasons why Admira were quite weak offensively in this match.