Test win in Bratislava

Rangnick: “That alone was worth the entrance fee”

Team boss Ralf Rangnick was not 100 percent satisfied with his team's performance.(Bild: GEPA pictures)

"That alone was worth the entrance fee," enthused Ralf Rangnick. He was, of course, referring to Christoph Baumgartner's lightning goal in Austria's 2:0 test win over Slovakia on Saturday. Otherwise, Rangnick's analysis was ambivalent.

"We got off to a really good start with the quickest goal," Rangnick explained in the ORF interview: "That alone was worth the entrance fee for the people in the stadium. But then we didn't play a good first half." Too many ball losses without pressure had brought unnecessary unrest into his team's play.

Second half much better
He liked the second half much better, said Rangnick - "on the one hand due to the changes (Rangnick brought on Wöber, Schmid and Wimmer, among others, in the second half), but also because we let the opponent come more."

And then there was the "absolute dream goal" by Andreas Weimann to make it 2:0: "It was superbly prepared by Romano (Schmid, ed.). But to convert the ball at the far post like that is something you have to do once." Rangnick even mentioned Schmid as a candidate for the starting eleven, for example against Turkey on Tuesday. He had trained excellently, delivered regularly in Bremen and was full of confidence.