OFB Cup 2019/20: LASK Linz vs Sturm Graz – tactical analysis

Next weekend the Austrian Bundesliga will return from the winter break and the matches of the 19th matchday will take place. However, within the last three days, the four quarter-finals of the OFB Cup took place. Ahead of the most interesting match of this round, LASK Linz vs Sturm Graz, two other games took place and both times a team from the second division was able to defeat a club from the Austrian Bundesliga. After this game, RB Salzburg was in the fourth game of the quarterfinals able to go through and so, LASK and Salzburg will face each other in the semi-finals of the ÖFB Cup.

LASK against Sturm Graz was the only matchup of all four quarterfinals between two teams from the highest Austrian league. Due to that, everyone expected that this game would be competitive and interesting to watch. However, Graz showed not a good performance while Linz tried to get the control of the game but it never worked off perfectly. Due to that, we didn’t see much goalscoring chances (both teams’ xG value was lower than one), but in the end, Linz were able to get through to the semi-finals with a 2:0 victory at home.

In this tactical analysis, we’ll look at both teams’ tactics and examine why LASK could score the two deciding goals which brought them the victory over a weak team of Graz.

Line-ups

Valérien Ismaël had to rotate a bit due to some injuries but stayed with his usual 3-4-3 formation. The 37-years-old Thomas Gebauer was between the sticks for Linz since the usual keeper Alexander Schlager is currently injured. The back three was made of the captain Gernot Trauner, Philipp Wiesinger and Reinhold Ranftl who usually plays as a right wing-back.

Stefan Haudum replaced the injured Peter Michorl and joined James Holland in the central midfield. The wing-backs were René Renner and Mavrin Potzmann. Klauss was the central striker while he was upfront supported by the two wingers Thomas Goiginger and Dominik Frieser.

On the other side, Strum’s head coach Nestor El Maestro also chose the 3-4-3 formation with Jörg Siebenhandl in goal. The back three in front of him consisted of Anastasios Avlonitis, Lukas Spendlhofer and Ivan Ljubic. The wings were occupied by captain Stefan Hierländer and Emanuel Sakic. Otar Kiteishvili and Juan Domínguez were the two central midfielders. Thorsten Röcher, Bekim Balaj and Philipp Huspek were the three men up front.

LASK dominating the game

As already mentioned, none of the two teams really showed a good performance in this game, but LASK were still clearly better. As we’ll see later in this tactical analysis, Graz didn’t even try to have a structured build-up. Ismaël’s squad wanted to build-up the attacks from the back with short passes but it also didn’t work off that good. One deciding factor was that none of the two teams had ever periods where they were able to stay in possession for a long time as their values for average possession duration tell with 10 seconds and nine seconds respectively. This was especially since there were so many fouls in this match (33) and due to that, neither team could keep the ball for a long period.

Anyways, Graz concentrated on the defending and hoped that they would score this one deciding goal after a long ball as we’ll see later when we look at their tactics in possession. When LASK were on the ball, Sturm created mostly a 5-4-1 as the wing-backs dropped deeper to create a back five while the wingers positioned themselves on the same height as the central midfielders and Balaj stayed alone upfront. They rarely used a high pressing but stayed deeper to stay compact and don’t give away any free spaces. In the shot below, we can see Graz’s 5-4-1 out of possession.