Rapid Vienna 0-0 Hoffenheim

The first half formations

A superior yet tactically avant-garde Hoffenheim failed to overcome their average Austrian opponents in this Sunday teatime friendly match between two sides gearing up for the 2011/12 season with new coaches.

Match preview here

Rapid drew their guests onto them right away, before scooping a ball over the caught-out Fabian Johnson for Christopher Drazan to chase and win a corner from. That was as good as it got for the hosts in the opening ten minutes,however,  as their German opponents soon got a hold on things. Holger Stanislawski’s side pressed high and fast through the miniature but fierce centre-midfield duo of Tobias Weis and Dominik Kaiser: this ensured that they kept Rapid penned back in their own half and in the habit of giving the ball away whenever they did get on it. However, Hoffe’s former St Pauli coach deployed an intriguing 4-2-4-0 system during the first 45 minutes, which although giving his side width and creativity, meant that there was no one in and around the box to feed.

Advertisement

Rapid Vienna-Hoffenheim preview

At the end of December 2008, a period which marks the conclusion of the winter campaign for many leagues across Europe, Ralf Rangnick’s Hoffenheim sat proudly on top of the German Bundesliga, and just over the border in Austria, Peter Pacult’s Rapid Vienna were in the runners-up spot behind SV Ried.

But how times change.

Hoffenheim collapsed spectacularly in the second half of the 2008/09 campaign, eventually missing out on a Europa League spot: and in the two seasons played since then, they’ve dropped even further away from the division’s European qualification places. Rapid Vienna, meanwhile, are a shadow of the side which dominated the domestic league in the 1980s, and didn’t go on to win the title in the aforementioned 2008/09 season either. Yet, at least they qualified for Europe in that campaign: the capital city side finished fifth in a ten-team league last season, just as close to the team which finished third-bottom as the newly-crowned Austrian champions (Sturm Graz).