Dietmar Kühbauer tasted the winning beer as a reward particularly well after winning the hit against his ex-club. “I sat upstairs in my trainer’s room and drank a Zipfer beer. It’s very rare for me, but today it was necessary,” said the good-humored LASK coach after the sovereign 2-1 win in the Bundesliga’s top game against Rapid. Sky expert Hans Krankl joked: “He will have cried for joy. He deserves the beer.”
But no tears flowed on Sunday evening, as Kühbauer explained. “It’s not like I’m crying at home with satisfaction. I’ve had good times at Rapid,” said the 51-year-old. Not everything went smoothly in Hütteldorf, but he will not say any negative things about his ex-club now. Rather, Kühbauer “slept just as well” before the league hit as before any other game.
Kühbauer emphasized once again: “It will never end that I will be a Rapidler. I’ve already said it 117,000 times that I’ll invest everything in the same way for the club I work for.” This investment seems to be paying off in Linz. LASK scored at least once in all nine competitive games under Kühbauer and is still at the top of the table after four rounds with ten points – three points ahead of Rapid.
“A deserved win. It was an incredibly good game from us, especially in the first half,” said Kühbauer about the performance of his team against the feared opponents from Vienna. For the first time in nine games, Linz scored a three-pointer against Grün-Weiss, thanks to goals from Thomas Goiginger (10′) and Keito Nakamura (43′). “We’ve now changed this statistic, so leading the table isn’t even the biggest issue,” the coach gave an insight.
It was normal for Kühbauer not to celebrate on the pitch with the fans and the team after the game. “I’ve never done that in my whole life. The players have done a great job and deserve it. I’m really happy in my little room,” he explained. It is crucial how LASK is doing and not “whether I jump in there”.
On Saturday we go to Graz to see runner-up Sturm. Kühbauer didn’t want to let a possible euphoria arise in the first place. “We’ve made a start now, but no more. The team can play football very well.” At Rapid, on the other hand, the disappointment after the defeat in the first division was clearly felt. “LASK was a bit better in all respects,” said Rapids substitute captain Marco Grüll, scorer for the 1: 2 in the 93rd minute. Goal scorer Guido Burgstaller analyzed: “We were just not good, a deserved defeat.”
Inferior Rapid relied on rotation instead of risk
Coach Ferdinand Feldhofer rotated his eleven through eight positions after the 120-minute European Cup shift against Neftci Baku three days earlier. “I didn’t want to rotate eight players, that wasn’t the plan,” said the coach, who had to do without ailing players like Patrick Greil and Maximilian Hofmann for a short time. But Feldhofer didn’t want to take the risk of “punching in ailing or extremely tired players who might then be out for the fall. I won’t take part in that.”
“I’m not going to do that!” – Feldhofer explains the big rotation of the starting XI
Kühbauer was “surprised” by Rapid’s line-up, “because they were already set up defensively,” as he said: “We had to find solutions and we found them.” The Hütteldorfer were quite different, as so often, in the second half acted without ideas in the last third. “We wanted to turn the game around, but couldn’t create any very dangerous scoring chances,” admitted Feldhofer. In the first half, basics such as duel behavior, distances and second balls would not have fitted.
That should change by Thursday (8 p.m.) at the latest, when Rapid is a guest at FC Vaduz in the first leg of the play-off of the Conference League qualifiers. “If you hear the names, then we are favourites. We’re happy to accept that again,” said Feldhofer before the duel against the penultimate team in the second Swiss league. Burgstaller remained positive after the defeat against LASK: “We can’t think about it for long, that’s the good thing.”
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Featured image: GEPA.