Rastal 5 - 2 Austria-Wien (387610848)

Overcast weather free of rain made for a crowd turnout of 26951 at SV Rastal Arena I today. Bogumił Kubina was the appointed referee with assistance provided by Turkka Sepponen and Georg Steinböck. Rastal started off with a 4-4-2 lineup. The following players took the field: Schreyer - Santos Leal, Soltész, Bon Nielsen, Oggier - Sabău, Gadeberg, Augsberger, Petta - Rodríguez, Moser.

Austria-Wien tactics involved an interesting 3-5-2 combination. The following players had been chosen: Burgstaller - Schweighofer, Meindl, Grün - Interholzinger, Höller, Lehner, Hein, Weinzerl - Wurm, Lamprecht.

Austria-Wien saw most attack opportunities on the wings. P. Lehner of Austria-Wien seemed to be floating in the air as he elegantly headed in to make the score 0 - 1 after a corner kick that was nicely executed by E. Höller. After 20 minutes of play, J. Gadeberg evened things up for Rastal with an impressive goal coming up the middle. 1 - 1. After 23 minutes of play, C. Bon Nielsen gave the home team a 2 - 1 lead after an attack coming in from the right. After 23 minutes, Austria-Wien used a short break in the game to take new instructions from their coach. Austria-Wien were determined to attack on the wing and their central attempts were constantly abandoned in favour of the wings. E. Hein finished off a quick charge from the left of the field by chipping the ball just past the home side's keeper, making the score 2 - 2 30 minutes into the match. After several obvious shirt pulling incidents, K. Augsberger got himself booked. The manager of Rastal was not happy. 2 - 2 was the score after the first half. Possession in this half belonged to Rastal, who controlled the ball 67 percent of the time.

G. Sabău gave Rastal the lead as he successfully challenged the guests' central defenders, then slotted the ball into the bottom corner, giving the keeper no chance. 3 - 2 With 80 minutes played, C. Rodríguez could have brought this one home for Rastal as he charged up on the left, but his hooked ball went just a bit too high. Cheers filled the stadium as C. Bon Nielsen broke through the visitors' central defence to put away the ball to increase the lead to 4 - 2 to Rastal. The Austria-Wien coach was desperate to reverse his team's fortunes in the game, and ordered his team to change strategy. As the game started to slip away for Austria-Wien, the manager decided to change the tactical approach. After 85 minutes, the away team failed to deal with a good exchange of passes on the right, and C. Rodríguez gave the Rastal supporters even more to cheer about when he increased the lead to 5 - 2. Rastal claimed to have seen most of the ball, and the statistics agreed with them - possession being 66 percent.

Rastal's top performer was clearly J. Gadeberg. L. Schreyer on the other hand, had a terrible day. R. Lamprecht performed admirably for Austria-Wien. H. Meindl turned in a dismal performance, however. The match ends 5 - 2.