Euro 2024: Austria finishes group matches with ‘incredible’ 1st place finish
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Austria’s Marcel Sabitzer scores a goal past Micky van de Ven of the Netherlands during their Group D match | Photo: AP
Berlin: Coach Ralf Rangnick of Austria hailed his team's Tuesday victory against France and the Netherlands in their Euro 2024 group as "incredible." Rangnick's team won a dramatic final Group D match 3-2 over the Dutch, who had to settle for third place.
Meanwhile, already-eliminated Poland held France to a 1-1 tie.
Austria advanced from third place before kickoff and on July 2, in Leipzig, they will play either Georgia, the Czech Republic, or Turkiye in the round of 16, AFP reported.
This is the first time they are reaching the European Championship quarter-finals.
“We started in the tournament with a 1-0 loss with an own goal against France and if you knew the pressure we had against Poland (3-1 win) when we knew we had to win to have a realistic chance to qualify, then to finish top of the group is incredible,” Rangnick told reporters.
“If you had bet on us to win here and France not to win you’d be a very rich man or woman...
“But that’s the great thing about football and we were rewarded for a great and energetic performance from my lads.”
Rangnick made four changes to the lineup that defeated Poland, knowing that Austria would qualify unless they lost by more than four goals. He said Italy's last-gasp equaliser against Croatia on Monday allowed him to rest some players who would have received a one-match suspension for a yellow card.
“If the goal in the Italy game hadn’t gone in in the last minute, we would’ve had a different line-up as we wouldn’t have been basically qualified,” added Rangnick.
“So we had an unexpected line-up but in the end all the thinking was worth it as we were able to go all in with this line-up and we didn’t have to think about second bookings and so forth and it worked out.”
Two Austrian players, Nicolas Seiwald and Christoph Baumgartner, currently play for RB Leipzig, while crucial midfielders Marcel Sabitzer and Konrad Laimer have previously played for the Bundesliga club. Rangnick also spent two seasons there as head coach, and he agreed that playing in Leipzig next week would offer his team an advantage.
“Now we have a week to prepare, we won’t have to travel a lot, we won’t have to fly...
“Apart from the three points we got and the ‘home’ game in Leipzig, the depth of our squad is better than we thought because the lads who played today did so well.”