No Points from a Clash against the Cup Winners

For Match Day 29 of the ADMIRAL Bundesliga season, we welcomed Rapid legend Didi Kühbauer and his newly crowned ÖFB Cup winners Wolfsberger AC to the Allianz Stadium on Sunday. The personnel situation was far from ideal ahead of kick-off: In addition to the recovering players Nenad Cvetković, Jakob Schöller, Niki Wurmbrand and Tobias Børkeeiet, Serge-Philippe Raux-Yao, Lukas Grgić, Amin Gröller and Mama Sangaré all had to serve yellow-card suspensions, with Guido Burgstaller also missing having been sent-off last week Interim coach Stefan Kulovits was therefore forced to make a number of changes to his starting XI.

As usual, Niklas Hedl began in goal. In defence were Jonas Auer, Ange Ahoussou, Dominic Vincze - who was making his Bundesliga starting debut - and Bendi Bolla. Romeo Amane and Momo Oswald formed the central pairing, with captain Matti Seidl and Andrija Radulović working on the wings, while Isak Jansson and Dion Beljo were strike-partners up top.

In a scrappy opening phase, we pressed hard in search of the first goal and repeatedly combined forward with flair, but the final decisive passes were just off-target. Matthias Seidl had the first good look at goal from a direct free-kick, which sailed a foot over the crossbar (11'). Ten minutes later, Niki Hedl had to intervene for the first time to save following a WAC corner kick (21’). Unfortunately, we had only just gotten into the game when there was an injury-related change: after Andrija Radulović was caught by an elbow from the visiting goalkeeper, our number 49 was unable to continue - Louis Schaub came on in his place (27’). The next opportunity fell to Dion Beljo, who headed the ball just wide of the woodwork (34'), and shortly afterwards, the fans in Green & White were celebrating but the ball landed agonisingly just wide of the net after a fine combination between Schaub and Matti Seidl (40'). The overall flow of the game was in the right direction, but we had nothing to show for it at the interval. 0-0.

We came out for the second half unchanged before Niki Hedl had to prove himself again, tipping a stinging shot up and over the crossbar (52'). We gradually got more into the game and, after a cross from Matti Seidl, there were mere centimetres stopping Beljo’s header from finding the net (60'). However, true to the saying “if you don't score the goals, you concede them”, the Lavanttal team took the lead via substitute David Atanga after a well-constructed attack (64'). 1-0 to WAC. Our coaching team reacted, bringing fresh legs into the game with Ercan Kara and Ismail Seydi coming on for Jonas Auer and Momo Oswald (70‘), and Noah Bischof also came on in place of Matthias Seidl in the 85th minute. Unfortunately, the Rapid players were thwarted until the end, and could not find the goal that was needed, and therefore there were no points to be taken from Sunday’s game.

We’ll gear up to go again as Rapid prepare for a Vienna Derby away from home (with no away fans allowed to attend) next Sunday

Fotos: GEPA