Rangnick: “The best game of my tenure”

Austria’s national football team is taking a lot of momentum with them from the end of the 2022 international season. Even if it was only a test match – European champions Italy were dominated in the first half and then controlled for a long time. The voices after the final whistle:

• Ralf Rangnick (ÖFB team manager): “You can say that it was the best game of my tenure. We’ve had good phases against France, Denmark and Croatia, but we’ve never played so consistently well over 60 or 70 minutes. The game could have ended 7:3, we certainly had a significantly higher number of clearer chances. You have to play that out against such an opponent first. It takes courage to attack them and force them to make mistakes. In the first five minutes we had a bit of a problem boldly covering the full-back positions, but after that we did really well and were rewarded for our performance. You also have to consider that one or the other important player was still missing. In any case, the game showed that I’m not at all worried about the team, if they perform regularly on the pitch, and I’m also convinced that we’ll qualify for the European Championship.”
• David Alaba (ÖFB captain and goalscorer): “I hit the ball quite well, it fluttered a bit, so it’s not that easy for the goalkeeper. The goal was very clear to end the year successfully, that’s how we performed today. It was a very good and positive week in Marbella, we had great conditions to prepare well and get to know the coach even better, we try to accept things and implement them. We can be a bit happy today, then we have to look ahead. We want to go all out next year and achieve our goals. Now it’s time to go on vacation.”
• Xaver Schlager (ÖFB goal scorer): “You don’t have to discuss it much, the ball was inside, that was important and gave the whole team confidence. Then it’s easier to play, that was the can opener. Everyone wants to score a goal, that’s completely logical. I saw there was a lot of space in front of me, I tried to run behind Marko, he played at the right moment. That was a good fit. I’m happy to have scored and that we celebrated the win.”
• Marko Arnautovic (ÖFB striker): “The win feels very good. I said before that even if it’s just a friendly, we take every game seriously. I’m glad we were able to celebrate a win in the last game of the year. It was a very good game, it was fun.”
• Philipp Lienhart (ÖFB defender): “The win was very important for us because we wanted to end the year well so that we could start qualifying for the European Championship with a positive feeling. We played well and deserved to win. We wanted to play aggressively against the Italians, not give them any space, and that worked out well. Because of their quality, Italy were more in our half in the second half, we defended passionately and deeply and thank God kept the zero.”
• Roberto Mancini (Italy Team Principal): “We knew we were taking risks. We had to do it anyway, you can only test in friendly matches. The strikers didn’t exert enough pressure, we lost a few balls that we don’t usually lose. We made mistakes, but lessons can be learned from them. I am not disappointed. It’s just a shame we lost. Physicality is the great quality of the Austrian team, I wasn’t surprised by that. We remember the game in London very well.”
• Vincenzo Grifo (Italy Forward): “Every game is important, we didn’t want to end the year like this. It’s not the best result for us. We didn’t manage to score an early goal, then the game might have gone differently. Then we conceded an early goal. Austria was good and we didn’t have the very best day. We knew that they were very confident with the ball and courageous, so we wanted to try to play the game. But it was difficult to get into the game. We wanted to push them up, sometimes we succeeded, sometimes not. That’s what a test is for, that you try things out.”