Not a trace of scanning, it went back and forth in Vienna’s Ernst Happel Stadium, which was sold out with 45,700 spectators. In the last group match of the UEFA Nations League, Austria’s national football team showed itself to be much better than the 2-0 defeat by France in Saint-Denis on Thursday and demanded everything from runner-up Croatia. However, the hoped-for success did not materialize. The guests won the encounter 3:1 (1:1) and thus took revenge for the 0:3 home defeat in Osijek.
While Croatia qualified for the Final 4 tournament for the title in this relatively young competition, the red-white-red relegation to League B was sealed. Team boss Ralf Rangnick didn’t have the best of hands with his triple change in the 62nd minute: After Maximilian Wöber, Christopher Trimmel and Marko Arnautovic, who is now Austria’s record international with 104 country matches, left the field and the trio Wöber/Lainer /Cham, there was very little going on. Especially defensively.
The shot with the conversion of the functioning three-man defense to four-man defense backfired. The Croatians destroyed the ÖFB’s hopes of counting with a double strike. “Joker” Livaja took advantage of a mistake made by Wöber and headed the ball in to make it 1-2 (69′). Less than 180 seconds later, Lovren had rushed ÖFB debutant Cham and also headed in completely unchallenged to make it 1:3 (72nd).
Open exchange of blows
Incidentally, there was no shortage of support for Ralf Rangnick’s red-white-red team, who had to win to stay up in the league. Denmark won against world champions France 2-0.
Rangnick could be satisfied with the courageous performance for an hour. At first, the ÖFB team did not let themselves be thrown off course by a classic false start. Old star Luka Modric (37), David Alaba’s club colleague at Real Madrid, scored the 0-1 (6th) in his 154th international match. But the answer should not be long in coming. Hoffenheim legionnaire Christoph Baumgartner completed a fine attack via Arnautovic and Gregoritsch with an exemplary header to make it 1-1 (9th).
After that there were chances here and there, it was an open exchange of blows that was well worth seeing. Arnautovic and Gregoritsch found the best opportunities for Austria. That was when the score was 1:1.
More on that shortly.
Source: Nachrichten
