Oh, by the way...

No legal midfield banter

Toni Polster (center) also wants to score a direct hit on court.

(Bild: Anja Richter)

Not many footballers manage to score a Ländlerspiel treble. One player who could soon achieve such a feat at the "biblical" age of 60 is Toni Polster. "Krone Vorarlberg" author Harald Petermichl deals with "unofficial international matches" and other ambiguities in his latest "Oh, by the way..." column.

With his penalty against Poland at Euro 2008, Ivica Vastić is currently the oldest player ever to have scored in an ÖFB shirt, as he was over 38 years old at the time. Whether this record will survive May is uncertain, because depending on the outcome of a trial at the Vienna Regional Court for Civil Matters, Vastic could soon be replaced by the over 60-year-old Toni Polster if the latter is awarded three goals in one go at the green table. At 60 on the goalscorer list - a record for eternity. Polster, represented by his lawyer Manfred Ainedter, once described by the "Standard" as "Karl-Heinz Grasser's legal alter ego", is known to have sued the ÖFB because it lists three matches from the 1980s against Liechtenstein, Morocco and Tunisia, in which the 1997 Sportsman of the Year scored three times, as "unofficial international matches" and the goals therefore do not appear in the statistics.

Ivica Vastic became the oldest ÖFB goalscorer at EURO 2008 when he converted a penalty against Poland.

(Bild: GEPA pictures)

Austria vs. Hungary as a world hit
It's a difficult question, because what is an "unofficial international match"? A look into the distant past shows that the ÖFB classifies the 4-0 victory of an Austrian team strengthened by two Englishmen against a Swiss team made up entirely of Englishmen and Americans as an unofficial international match in 1901, while the match between Austria and Hungary (5-0) on October 12, 1902, originally announced as a "Vienna vs. Budapest city match", is considered the first official international match (the very first on the continent). No wonder that this traditional duel, which has now been played 137 times, is second only to the South American classic Argentina - Uruguay in the ranking of the most frequent international pairings.

"Writing a bit of legal history"
For the decision to classify the disputed matches as unofficial, the ÖFB's legal experts put forward arguments that may or may not be plausible and, as a neutral observer, you find yourself thinking that, if there are no other problems, it's "Ollas Leiwaund" anyway, to paraphrase Rainhard Fendrich. However, since Mr. Ainedter's core competence is not in finely chiselled diplomacy and he recently attracted attention with the statement "It would be exciting to perhaps write a bit of legal history", there is still a lot to come. And not just legal midfield skirmishes, but unconditional offensives. Ivo Vastić can take his time and see who will be the first to run into a counterattack.