One of the wonderful things about international football is discovering more about other nations’ identities through their style of football.
If you read the seminal book about Dutch football, David Winner’s A Beautiful Orange, you learn about Total Football, the revolutionary approach of the 1970s, through the prism of Dutch architecture and the widening of the country by reclaiming land from the sea.
If you read many works by Jimmy Burns, a prolific writer on Spanish football, he likens the tiki-taka style that dominated in the 2010s to the Spanish love of bull-fighting. That sport, he suggests, is not watched for ‘the kill’, it’s more about the patience, the flair of the bullfighter, the over-elaboration — it’s why Spain always took so long to score. Brazilian football, stereotypically about beauty and intricacy, has long been linked to samba.
Austria is one of Europe’s most culturally rich and beautiful countries; the home of Mozart, of Strauss. A century ago, its coffee houses inspired some of the most forward-thinking football approaches of its time. But its current style of football can be linked directly to something considerably less romantic. Austrian football is essentially an extension of a marketing campaign.
The common misconception is that Red Bull is a drinks manufacturer. No, instead, Red Bull is a marketing company. The drink itself is made by Rauch, another Austrian company, and the role of Red Bull is purely to brand and promote it. Red Bull are amongst the most relentless advertisers in the world, particularly through sport. There are only 10 teams currently competing in Formula 1, for example, and Red Bull is responsible for two of them. Watch any extreme sport — skateboarding, various winter sports, mountain biking — and you can’t escape them.
But nothing quite cuts through like football. And therefore, Red Bull have invested huge sums into the game in traditional ways (sponsorship) and a very modern way (forming a multi-club network across the world). But what’s also happened, uniquely, is their name has become associated with a particular way of playing the game.
(Marcel ter Bals/DeFodi Images via Getty Images)
Red Bull is selling an energy drink and its target market is young people. Handily, its clubs exhibit a footballing approach that is, by and large, young players playing ultra-energetic football. And often guiding them during that process is Ralf Rangnick, someone who has spent much of his managerial career putting in place structures to help these clubs play high-energy football.
Rangnick was a clever choice for Austria. The German is one of those figures who has had more influence on the game than success in it — in his days as a television pundit, he helped to popularise the concept of counter-pressing. His influence on the likes of Jurgen Klopp, amongst others, cannot be denied. But successful coaches who were inspired by him have tended to use elements of his approach as part of a wider strategy. Klopp’s Dortmund were better counter-attackers than they were counter-pressers and his Liverpool relied on the guile of a false nine, clinical wide forwards and the two most creative full-backs in Premier League history.
But Rangnick is a fundamentalist. Like many coaches who never really made the grade as a player, he doesn’t appear to believe in the ability of individuals to shape or decide a game through technical quality and cerebral genius. When he was placed in charge of Manchester United for half a season, he found himself completely unable to work with Cristiano Ronaldo, the greatest goalscorer in international football history. Rangnick once complained that Ronaldo was “not a player, even when he was young, who was crying, shouting, ‘Hooray, the other team has got the ball’.”
In Rangnick’s world, this was an entirely normal thing to object to, but all the other most celebrated players in the history of the beautiful game do not cheer when the opposition have the ball, either. They want their side to have the ball.
(Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
In that respect, while many of Rangnick-style teams’ tactics are complex, particularly because they take place at such high speed, the fundamental principles are very basic, an updated version of the old-school ideology which damaged English football for decades. Rangnick wants his players to run really hard and he wants them to tackle really hard. A crucial part of his approach is the simple concept of ‘pressing in the final two metres’ rather than pressing and then slowing down as you approach a player. Essentially, get stuck in.
Football’s development over the last century or so has been the gradual shift from being a territorial game to a possession game, a major reason the sport has become such a popular spectator sport — it’s simply more watchable when teams like having the ball. Rangnick wants to reverse that; his Austria side made the second-most tackles in the group stage but had only the 16th-highest pass completion rate.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but this approach tends to produce scrappy, rushed matches with a huge number of turnovers and little regard for using the ball carefully. It is about tempo rather than technique. It is perfect for an era of ever-reducing attention spans.
Austria, a footballing irrelevance for decades, have unquestionably bought into his methods. Rangnick is a natural teacher and he has the unusual advantage of having effectively developed many Austrian players at Red Bull-owned clubs to play in his employers’ familiar style.
It’s notable, though, that almost none of the players at his disposal are particularly good at the technical elements of football. Using players from other ‘smaller’ nations for a fair-ish comparison, you won’t find anyone who can control the game like Luka Modric, or unlock a defence like Christian Eriksen, or dribble like Khvicha Kvaratskhelia. The focus on ‘cheering’ when the opposition have the ball wouldn’t produce that. Instead, you have a series of high-tempo, chaotic, workmanlike pressers. Imagine what a more cultured football thinker might have created with such resources.
Austria lost the xG battle in their group games with France and the Netherlands (Alex Livesey/Getty Images)
Does it work? The jury is out. Red Bull Salzburg have turned the Austrian Bundesliga into as much of a one-team league as the German Bundesliga and RB Leipzig have challenged at the top in Germany, too, but it’s important to consider the sheer amount of money these sides have spent. Leipzig, one of few clubs that don’t adhere to the Bundesliga’s 50+1 principles, have often been the second-biggest spenders in Germany behind Bayern, so the attempts to make this about culture rather than cash is either naive or part of the PR drive, depending on the source.
At Euro 2024, Austria’s topping of the group ahead of France, the Netherlands and Poland was a surprise in terms of pre-tournament expectations. It was also a surprise when you look at the expected goals numbers. If the scoring had corresponded with those numbers, Austria would have lost to France, drawn with Poland and lost to the Netherlands, exiting the tournament with a single point.
There wouldn’t be any shame in that — it’s pretty much what you’d expect of this squad, especially one without their best player in David Alaba, someone who escaped the energy-drink conveyor belt and developed at a technical footballing school, Bayern Munich.
But the reality doesn’t fit with the idea that Austria have been one of the tournament’s better performers. Of sides to progress to the knockout stage, only the tournament’s rank outsiders Georgia recorded worse underlying numbers.
Of course, Austria are in the weaker half of the draw and anything could happen from here. Twenty years ago, when Otto Rehhagel’s Greece won Euro 2004, it involved a veteran German coach managing a foreign side with an approach that showed little regard for possession. Maybe history will repeat itself.
In a purely marketing sense, the plan has worked brilliantly. Many journalists and pundits happily promote ‘Red Bull football’ without caring, or realising, that Austria are a billboard as much as a football side, which is depressing. While economic factors obviously play a major part in the level of respective national sides and international football is hardly separate from the ills of capitalism in various ways, there is something purer, less corporate about the international game. Countries can’t become good by splurging on new players. Players can’t jump ship for a better contract. There are no corporate logos on shirts.
But there’s a big corporate logo stamped on Austria’s entire style of play. It is cohesive and a distinct way of playing the game and it has involved meticulous planning and preparation. But it is, ultimately, an extension of a marketing campaign and tonight it will be exhibited in Leipzig, at a stadium called the Red Bull Arena. If that doesn’t make you feel slightly sick, you’ve clearly never experienced a Jagerbomb.
Austria is a pleasant country, the players are a likeable bunch and Rangnick is, by all accounts, a good man. But this isn’t what international football should be all about and it would be to European football’s benefit if Austria’s high-energy approach, to adapt a familiar slogan, does not give them wins.
(Top photo: Christina Pahnke – sampics/Getty Images)