Football excitement
Inquiry from Styria cost Vikings title
The AFC Vienna Vikings footballers retroactively lost the 2025 championship title due to an incorrectly registered player. The "Krone" asked those involved and found out where the decisive tip-off came from four months after the end of the season.
"I mainly feel sorry for the lads," sighs Karl Wurm, President of AFC Vienna Vikings. Austria's oldest and most experienced football club was stripped of its 2025 championship title and fined a five-figure sum. The reason is a player who did not register in accordance with the rules.
"Our hands are tied. If a member of our association reports something like this, we have to investigate and enforce it," says Michael Eschlböck, President of the Austrian Football Association AFBÖ.
The bone of contention is wide receiver Moritz Riedinger. The German played for the Greenville University Panthers - an NCAA Division III college - in the USA in 2019. Mind you, as a kicker, not a receiver. Nevertheless, he should correctly have been registered as an "A-Class" player. This applies to athletes who have played in the North American professional leagues NFL or CFL - or at an NCAA college.
"An epochal mistake"
However, Riedinger was incorrectly registered as an "E-class" player. This applies to players who are not Austrian but do not fall into the A category. "An epoch-making mistake," says Wurm. Riedinger's commitment in the USA even appears in an article that circulated in Vikings fan forums around his signing in March.
According to league sources, the German's false status was generally known, but was "kindly ignored". Retroactively, all Vikings games in which Riedinger was used will be scored as 0:35. The Austrian Bowl, which the AFC Vikings had won 27:17 against their Viennese arch-rivals Danube Dragons, is deemed not to have been played and the state championship title retroactively goes to the Dragons.
"We would have preferred to win this title on the field," says Uras Aslan, president of the Danube Dragons, who also sits on the board of the AFBÖ and holds a position with the international federation IFAF. "But fair play doesn't just apply on game day, but from the moment you register players with the AFBÖ. The rules apply to everyone - and they always apply."
Request from Graz got the ball rolling
As the title belongs to the Dragons, one might assume that the tip-off came from their corner. But that is not the case. According to information from the Krone, the Graz Gants contacted league commissioner Dieter Müllner with an informal inquiry about the competition rules for the coming season and got the ball rolling.
In the end, the Dragons are the beneficiaries. It's not just the AFC Vikings that suffer, but red-white-red football as a whole. In addition to the clubs, the association also has to check the status of the players. Which should be manageable with only six teams in the Austrian Football League. There are obviously enough sources of error. At clubs, the association and the league.
This article has been automatically translated,
read the original article here.
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