“The ÖFB is more than the men’s national team,” explained Schöttel and, as sports director, presented his six (partly new) specialist departments in the directorate, which has 45 full-time employees. In addition to the eleven national teams, these also include grassroots football, talent development, girls’ and women’s football, coach education and science.
“We want to further develop every area of football,” emphasized Schöttel, who followed Willi Ruttensteiner as sports director in 2017 and now presented the new structures after an evaluation. The department for science, analysis and development, headed by the previous game analyst Stefan Oesen, has been new since autumn 2021.
Grassroots football will initially deliver a reform next season. In the fight against high drop-out rates in children and young people, the ÖFB relies on new forms of competition. From the coming season there will no longer be any tables in competitions up to the U12, the focus should be on individual development. In addition, smaller teams will compete on smaller pitches.
Reform in children’s football
According to ÖFB information, around 110,000 children and young people in Austria are currently playing football. However, according to a study by the European Football Association (UEFA), more than every second player played their last game before their 18th birthday. “That’s a number that we want to improve as an association,” said Stefan Gogg, head of the grassroots department at ÖFB. One in four children would be lost again within the first year after entry.
As a measure, new forms of competition and rules of the game for the youth sector were launched on the basis of current sports science findings. In order to promote ball action, up to the U10 level, players should play against each other on several playing fields at the same time – ideally tailored to the respective level of performance. For this purpose, dribbling instead of a throw-in or kick-off is provided. There are rotation requirements for a more balanced involvement of all players. Details can be found on the Wirliebenleder.at website designed by the ÖFB – the reform will be implemented by all clubs throughout Austria for the new season.
ÖFB increasingly relies on science
In the future, the ÖFB will also rely on the science component. “Ten years ago, I couldn’t have foreseen what value and what dimensions this would take on so quickly,” said Schöttel. That was taken into account. Oesen and his team process enormous amounts of data on a knowledge platform from the provider SAP. In addition to video and training analyzes and diagnostics, data-based controlling of one’s own work on a scientific level is also made possible, explained the head of department.
According to Oesen, the recommendations for action that the ÖFB gives the players via its “Players First” concept are also checked on the basis of data. “Players First” is not a game philosophy regarding formations and principles, emphasized Thomas Eidler, Head of Coach Education and Training, which is now called the ÖFB Coach Academy. Eidler spoke of a “paradigm shift” – from the basic order and positions to behavior and functions that the individual players should fulfill.
need to catch up in other areas
In terms of promoting talent, the general manager, Martin Scherb, sees a need to catch up, especially in the goalkeeper area. There, with Günter Kreissl as “Head of Goalkeeping”, the first pegs were hammered in. Project 12, which many prominent ÖFB footballers have gone through as an individual support program, has also “changed in a revolutionary way,” said Scherb. “The biggest lever there was that we designed the watering can system differently.”
Isabel Hochstöger, as head of women’s and girls’ football, is hoping to use summer’s European Championships in England as a catalyst. Currently, only seven percent of those active in Austria’s clubs are women. “We have not yet succeeded in significantly increasing this number.” In popular sports, the main focus is on keeping children in sports for longer, explained Gogg, who is responsible for this in the ÖFB.
Schöttel was satisfied to have kept the most important players, who would have been eligible to play for several nations, with the association in the recent past. The Viennese named Sasa Kalajdzic and Yusuf Demir, among others, but also Dejan Ljubicic, Junior Adamu and Ercan Kara. According to Schöttel, even superstar Luka Modric made representations to Adrian Grbic at home to win him for Croatia – without success. However, the striker from Rapids Conference League conqueror Vitesse Arnheim has not been called up to the ÖFB team for almost a year.
