European Championship prediction video
Matthäus believes Austria can reach the quarter-finals
Germany's record international Lothar Matthäus believes Austria can "get through the group stage" at the EURO in Germany and even reach the quarter-finals! However, the Interwetten expert sees the possible absence of David Alaba as a bitter loss.
"I've always seen the Austrian national team going a bit further in recent tournaments than they actually did. They're not far away, often they've only missed nuances," said Germany's record international.
"There are many, many, many players who are familiar to us from the German Bundesliga, who are not just any players in these teams, but regular players, key players and important players for the club, and that's why the Austrian team certainly has the potential to reach the round of 16 or quarter-finals in a difficult group, for example - for everything else you might need a little bit of luck. But as always, I trust Austria to get through the group stage at every major tournament they've been to in recent years."
Alaba cannot be completely replaced
However, Matthäus does not want to predict whether captain David Alaba will be present at the European Championship in Germany. "That's a bitter loss, of course. How Ralf Rangnick handles it is his decision. There are certainly a few candidates. But Alaba is not just the one who plays for Real Madrid now, he has so much experience, he has so much quality and his colleagues could always rely on him. He was the driving force, he was and is the face of the Austrian national team. You can't really say what's best from a distance. You can't replace him one-to-one anyway and I assume that Ralf Rangnick will have the same foresight or already has a feeling of what it will be like if David doesn't make it - which we don't want. We all wish him all the best and hope that he is there. But in Austrian soccer, there are certainly one or two other solutions that can come close to replacing him in the end.
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