If this was supposed to be the group of death, no one told Austria. Ralf Rangnick’s endearing underdogs have reshaped the draw, and perhaps the destiny, of Euro 2024 by topping it. They beat Netherlands. More than that, though, they blitzed them; fearless and ferocious, Austria recovered from conceding two equalisers to condemn the Dutch to defeat courtesy of Marcel Sabitzer’s terrific finish.
They head to Leipzig as group winners. Netherlands, their qualification already assured, nonetheless stumbled from first to third on an eventful afternoon. It is Gelsenkirchen for them.
If Rangnick’s men still needed France to slip up to leapfrog them, and they did, theirs is a historic feat. Not since the 1978 World Cup, when Hans Krankl’s goals ensured they finished above Brazil, have Austria won a group in tournament football.
Now players such as the superb Sabitzer and the unheralded Romano Schmid have a similar feat to their name. Rangnick has another triumph for his blueprint: all-action football has been allied with the ability to respond to setbacks.
Austria were pegged back by Poland having led and recovered to beat them. Every time the Netherlands scored, they summoned a response.
It was Rangnick’s beloved 4-2-2-2 against the typically Dutch 4-3-3. The gegenpressing school of thought prevailed. Austria knocked the Dutch out of their rhythm. Amid the mayhem their frantic football engendered, they prospered. Yet if the equation before kick-off was that all Austria required to advance was to avoid a heavy defeat, that was scarcely their intent. Perhaps Rangnick looked to be lulling Netherlands into a false sense of security, benching Christoph Baumgartner, Konrad Laimer, Philipp Mwene and Kevin Danso, each a booking away from a ban. But Baumgartner, the catalyst for the win over Poland, came on and supplied the slide-rule pass for Sabitzer to lift a shot over Bart Verbruggen. He was not finished there: Baumgartner had a goal chalked off himself.
Once again, Rangnick made telling changes and, for the second successive game, Austria scored three goals, had another disallowed and displayed a capacity to wreak havoc. When some more star-studded teams are struggling to score, they are allying energy with their brand of creativity.
For Netherlands, however, it was a demoralising, perhaps damaging afternoon. Few have such a gifted group of defenders but there are questions if Ronald Koeman is selecting the optimum combination. They were opened up too often and could have conceded more; in part, that reflected the problems in midfield. An indication of them came when Joey Veerman was substituted before half time, with Xavi Simons, who had been demoted, then introduced.
Yet it has been a tournament of own goals; Austria’s lone defeat came when Max Wober inadvertently scored for France. This time, they were the beneficiaries. With Mwene among the booked contingent, Rangnick had brought Alexander Prass into the starting 11 after his influential cameo against Poland. The left-back looked a still more impactful starter. Three times in the first eight minutes, he was in space to cross. The third brought an unstoppable finish.
Donyell Malen was brought in to the Dutch side to find the net and he did: sadly for him, it was his own, sliding in to connect with force and send his attempted clearance flying past Verbruggen. Malen’s ill-fated afternoon continued when he scuffed a shot after being released by Tijani Reijnders and ended when he was replaced by Wout Weghorst. Right wing feels a problem position for Koeman; Weghorst, at least, has sewn up the role of super sub.
He supplied the flick-on when Memphis Depay scored the second equaliser – it was initially and wrongly disallowed for handball, but corrected after the intervention of VAR – and he came close to making it 3-3 with a diving header.
Netherlands’ first goal came 75 seconds into the second half. Lutsharel Geertruida won the ball in his own half and ran 40 yards unchallenged. He fed Cody Gakpo who cut in and then curled in his shot. It was a fifth goal in six group-stage games, spread across the 2022 World Cup and Euro 2024, for Gakpo.
Ten minutes later, however, they were back ahead. Schmid met Florian Grillitsch’s cross with a diving header; with the Dutch defence dragged across, Schmid had only to escape from Gakpo to meet it. The response came still quicker after Depay scored for the Dutch with 15 minutes to play. Five minutes after, the excellent Sabitzer, who had almost struck earlier, did.
For the Dutch, a first group-stage defeat in tournament football since 2012. For the Austrians, a route they had probably not envisaged. They can look down the table and see a team who have been in the last two World Cup finals beneath them. And for Austria, who have spent much of the last quarter of a century in the footballing wilderness, that is a stunning turnaround.
