"Forgotten how to lose"

More respect than ever for our ÖFB team

Ralf Rangnick has formed a successful squad.

(Bild: GEPA)

European champions? Austria is ranked sixth by the Germans. EURO form? Red-White-Red in the top three: "They have forgotten how to lose!"

The foreign journalists who attended Philipp Lienhart and Phillipp Mwene's press conference yesterday were also amazed by the media center perfectly designed by ÖFB Head of Communications Iris Stöckelmayr in the venerable Marschall-Haus, built in 1950, with its press conference room, work areas and lounges: "Respect, that's something to be proud of," was the unanimous opinion of all.

Respect - Austria's national team has now earned it throughout European soccer, not least due to its recent run of success (six wins in a row, most recently the 1:1 in Switzerland); neither in 2008, 2016 nor 2021 had the Red-White-Red been expected to do as much before a EURO as they did this time:

• In a poll conducted by German specialist magazine "Kicker" on who would be European champions, in which around 70,000 people took part, Austria came sixth - ahead of such renowned soccer nations as the Netherlands, Croatia, Italy and Belgium. According to this survey, Germany (35.8%) will be the European champions, followed by France (19.3%), Spain (12.1%) and England (11.4%).
• In the last major EURO form check by the "Bild" newspaper, Austria is listed in third place behind Belgium and Croatia - the mass-circulation newspaper comments: "Austria has forgotten how to lose under team boss Ralf Rangnick, is starting this European Championship with a lot of self-confidence and has only lost one of its last 16 games, a 3-2 defeat against Belgium!"

All among the top 28 in the world
Our opponents France and the Netherlands follow in fourth and fifth place - that alone shows how difficult the red-white-red group is. This is also underpinned by the statistics: no other group is as difficult and therefore as good as ours in terms of places in the soccer world rankings - all four teams are among the top 28 in the world; if you only take the teams from Europe, then the numbers are 1 (France), 5 (Netherlands), 13 (Austria) and 16 (Poland).

Rangnick has often referred to the statistics ("so that everyone is clear and aware of which group we're in"), and for his players it is additional motivation: "You want to compete with the best of the best at a EURO, and that's definitely the case in our group," says Mwene, who is looking forward to the clash with Kylian Mbappé.

So they are motivated, and Ralph Krueger is also playing his part. - He, who celebrated great success in ice hockey with VEU Feldkirch and the Swiss national team, was chairman of the board at Southampton in soccer and is currently chairman of the supervisory board at Austria AG, gave a motivational speech to the team last night. He also came up with the idea of the team attending a Rod Stewart concert in Berlin on Saturday. One song is called "Sailing" - are our stars sailing on the wave of EURO success? Europe certainly has respect!