Coach Matthias Jaissle’s team celebrated their fifth win in the fifth Bundesliga championship group game with a thrilling 2-1 (0-0) win at Vienna Austria, but did not receive any support from Rapid. The Viennese would have had to win at Salzburg’s pursuers Sturm Graz in order to enable the Mozart city-dwellers to win their ninth championship in a row.
Nevertheless, the “Bulls” have everything in their own hands in the second leg against Austria next Sunday to be able to celebrate the next championship in front of their home crowd. In the Generali Arena, Junior Adamu (52′) and Joker Luka Sucic (78′) scored for the Jaissle team, who are twelve points ahead of Sturm with five games left in the season. Aleksandar Jukic (65th) scored the equalizer for the bravely fighting Austria with a hand penalty.
“Austria expert” Karim Adeyemi was back in the starting XI for the first time in a month. The 20-year-old German national player had scored the winning goal 1-0 in each of the two previous season duels with the “Veilchen”. Austria coach Manfred Schmid had to do without the veteran Alexander Grünwald, who became a father at Easter. Meanwhile, center forward Romeo Vucic made his debut.
The Viennese started enthusiastically, cheered on by 9,659 spectators, the “bulls” initially had a hard time against Austria’s courageous 3-4-3. Adamu found the first good chance after 15 minutes, but the U21 international’s volley after a corner kick went well over. In the course of the encounter, Austria got into the game better and kept Salzburg away from their own goal for long stretches.
Shortly after the change of sides, referee Christian-Petru Ciochirca was in the spotlight several times. First, an alleged penalty foul by Manfred Fischer against Nicolas Capaldo on the edge of the penalty area caused a stir, VAR Rene Eisner reversed the decision after seeing the video images. Capaldo headed the due free kick to the crossbar, but Ciochirca wrongly decided on a corner kick. This was extended by Kamil Piatkowski with a header to the second post, where Adamu scored his sixth league goal free-standing and ice-cold into the near corner.
Penalties were awarded at the other end ten minutes later after Piatkowski touched the ball with his hand after a Jukic hook. Jukic played himself and didn’t give RB goalie Philipp Köhn a chance. The winner of the double managed to get the answer again in the final phase: Joker Noah Okafor served Sucic with a perfect cross from the left, the 19-year-old Croatian didn’t give Austria goalie Patrick Pentz a chance with a direct shot into the far corner.
In added time, Dominik Fitz scored with a direct free-kick for a supposed equalizer, but Noah Ohio blocked Köhn’s view while he was offside.
Source: Nachrichten
