After a long break which took about two months, Austrian football is finally back and it returned with a big game: the final of the OFB Cup. The German Bundesliga already returned two weeks ago, but this game was the first one since the coronavirus in which two teams fought for a trophy.
Additionally, it was the chance for RB Salzburg’s coach Jesse Marsch to win the first trophy in his career as a head coach. The American was already the assistant coach at RB Leipzig in the Bundesliga and the head coach of RB New York in the MLS, but he was not able to win a trophy until now.
On the other side, Austria Lustenau were the clear underdogs in this game as they are currently seventh in Austria’s second division while RB Salzburg are the best side of Austria as they also showed this season in the UEFA Champions League against Club Brugge, Napoli, and Liverpool.
In this tactical analysis, we look at both teams’ tactics and discuss the reasons for the clear 5-0 victory of RB Salzburg over Austria Lustenau. Due to this win, the team of Marsch crowned themselves the champions of the ÖFB Cup in this final.
Line-ups
Marsch lined up his team in their typical 4-4-2 formation with Cican Stankovic between the sticks and the back four in front of him consisted out of Andreas Ulmer, Maximilian Wöber, André Ramalho, and Albert Vallci (Rasmus Kristensen who joined them last summer from Ajax was once more injured). Majeed Ashimeru and Zlatko Junuzović were the central midfielders while Dominik Szoboszlai, who is linked with Chelsea, Lazio, and other top clubs, and Noah Okafor were the wingers. Up front, Patson Daka and Hee-chan Hwang were the two strikers.
On the other side, the 21-year-old Florian Eres played his first game for Lustenau since the usual keeper Domenik Schierl was suspended. In front of him, Roman Mählich used a 4-1-4-1 formation. Christian Schilling, Dominik Stumberger, Sebastian Feyrer, and Michael Lageder were the four defenders and Christoph Freitag was the lone man in front of the defence. Thomas Meyer and Alexander Ranacher were the wingers, and Daniel Tiefenbach and Pius Grabher supported Freitag in the centre. The 31-year-old Ronivaldo was the single striker.
RB Salzburg’s positionings during the build-up
Before we dive in this tactical analysis into the tactics of both teams in more detail, we take a short look at the average positionings of the 20 outfield players since these will already tell us a bit about how the game went down. These can be seen in the screenshot below (credits: Wyscout).
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