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Five teams kick off their Champions League fixtures this week with a chance of securing a place in the last 16 – and it is not difficult to spot the odd one out. While Ajax, Bayern München, Juventus and Liverpool have 18 European crowns between them, Salzburg have never made it beyond the Champions League group stage.
Yet a victory for Matthias Jaissle’s men win at Wolfsburg on Tuesday night would carry them through and mean another milestone attained by a club gradually gaining a foothold in Europe’s elite division. Prior to their 2005 takeover by Red Bull they had competed in the continent’s leading club competition just once previously: in 1994/95 under the guise of Casino Salzburg. Fresh from reaching the UEFA Cup final in 1994, they finished third in a tough group that featured that season’s two finalists: defending champions AC Milan and Ajax, the eventual winners (who they actually held to two draws).
Fast forward a quarter of a century or so and the foothold looks more secure for a club located in the foothills of the Alps. Europa League semi-finalists in 2018 and quarter-finalists the following campaign, Salzburg are competing in the Champions League group stage for the third year running and are already well placed to improve on two successive third-placed finishes after back-to-back home wins over LOSC and Wolfsburg.
One thing that the Austrian title-holders do not lack is confidence – the product of a 28-match unbeaten run in all competitions dating back to 28 April. Sevilla coach Julen Lopetegui made this very point before Salzburg opened their Group G programme with a 1-1 draw in southern Spain, warning that here were a team in a winning groove. Indeed Saturday’s 2-2 draw at SV Ried, when they conceded a 92nd-minute equalising goal, was only the second time they have failed to win in 13 Austrian Bundesliga outings this term.
This consistency on the field is a mirror of Salzburg’s approach off it. Jaissle, who replaced Jesse Marsch in the summer, knows the club inside out: he was first employed as Salzburg’s U17s coach, next he left for two seasons in Denmark as assistant coach at Brøndby, then returned in 2019 to coach the U18s before spending six months from January as coach of their feeder club Liefering, in Austria’s second tier. Hence the smooth transition this summer. (Similarly, his predecessor Marsch had a background as New York Red Bulls coach and as RB Leipzig assistant coach before taking the helm at their Austrian sister club.)
Something similar applies to the players too. Liefering, the district in Salzburg where the club’s academy is based, is also the name of their aforementioned feeder team. Of the 16 players who appeared in the 3-1 win over Wolfsburg a fortnight ago, five are Liefering graduates and, as a close observer of the club attests, they benefit from encountering the “same style of play, same formation, same philosophy”.
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That style involves speed and energy. Fast transitions to attack are integral to their approach, with Salzburg players swarming around their opponents to win back the ball, profiting from the youthful legs of a team that – against Wolfsburg – had nine players aged 23 or under in its starting XI. Malian midfielder Mohamed Camara, 21, ranks joint-fifth for ball recoveries so far in the group stage, with 27 from his three matches.
Data enthusiasts should note too that Salzburg ranked fourth in last season’s Champions League for the average number of counter pressures per game: the metric for measuring a team’s efforts to win the ball back quickly, exerting pressure within five seconds of losing the ball. Moreover, they were first for counter pressure regains. This season, in the away leg of their play-off against Brøndby in August, Salzburg achieved 85 recoveries. This meant that they won the ball back more than any other team in any game so far in the 2021/22 competition.
And when they do recapture the ball, they play it ball forward quickly to exploit the pace of forwards such as Karim Adeyemi. A scorer on his Germany debut against Armenia in September, he won all three of the penalties awarded to Salzburg on Matchday 1 in Seville; he then converted two spot kicks against LOSC on Matchday 2 and found the net again against Wolfsburg. Adeyemi is 19. For the record, their other scorers to date in Group G are 19-year-old Luka Sučić, who is a Serbian midfielder, and 21-year-old Noah Okafor, a Swiss forward.
For them, as for Salzburg, the future looks bright.
Five teams kick off their Champions League fixtures this week with a chance of securing a place in the last 16 – and it is not difficult to spot the odd one out. While Ajax, Bayern München, Juventus and Liverpool have 18 European crowns between them, Salzburg have never made it beyond the Champions League group stage.
Yet a victory for Matthias Jaissle’s men win at Wolfsburg on Tuesday night would carry them through and mean another milestone attained by a club gradually gaining a foothold in Europe’s elite division. Prior to their 2005 takeover by Red Bull they had competed in the continent’s leading club competition just once previously: in 1994/95 under the guise of Casino Salzburg. Fresh from reaching the UEFA Cup final in 1994, they finished third in a tough group that featured that season’s two finalists: defending champions AC Milan and Ajax, the eventual winners (who they actually held to two draws).
Fast forward a quarter of a century or so and the foothold looks more secure for a club located in the foothills of the Alps. Europa League semi-finalists in 2018 and quarter-finalists the following campaign, Salzburg are competing in the Champions League group stage for the third year running and are already well placed to improve on two successive third-placed finishes after back-to-back home wins over LOSC and Wolfsburg.
One thing that the Austrian title-holders do not lack is confidence – the product of a 28-match unbeaten run in all competitions dating back to 28 April. Sevilla coach Julen Lopetegui made this very point before Salzburg opened their Group G programme with a 1-1 draw in southern Spain, warning that here were a team in a winning groove. Indeed Saturday’s 2-2 draw at SV Ried, when they conceded a 92nd-minute equalising goal, was only the second time they have failed to win in 13 Austrian Bundesliga outings this term.
This consistency on the field is a mirror of Salzburg’s approach off it. Jaissle, who replaced Jesse Marsch in the summer, knows the club inside out: he was first employed as Salzburg’s U17s coach, next he left for two seasons in Denmark as assistant coach at Brøndby, then returned in 2019 to coach the U18s before spending six months from January as coach of their feeder club Liefering, in Austria’s second tier. Hence the smooth transition this summer. (Similarly, his predecessor Marsch had a background as New York Red Bulls coach and as RB Leipzig assistant coach before taking the helm at their Austrian sister club.)
Something similar applies to the players too. Liefering, the district in Salzburg where the club’s academy is based, is also the name of their aforementioned feeder team. Of the 16 players who appeared in the 3-1 win over Wolfsburg a fortnight ago, five are Liefering graduates and, as a close observer of the club attests, they benefit from encountering the “same style of play, same formation, same philosophy”.
That style involves speed and energy. Fast transitions to attack are integral to their approach, with Salzburg players swarming around their opponents to win back the ball, profiting from the youthful legs of a team that – against Wolfsburg – had nine players aged 23 or under in its starting XI. Malian midfielder Mohamed Camara, 21, ranks joint-fifth for ball recoveries so far in the group stage, with 27 from his three matches.
Data enthusiasts should note too that Salzburg ranked fourth in last season’s Champions League for the average number of counter pressures per game: the metric for measuring a team’s efforts to win the ball back quickly, exerting pressure within five seconds of losing the ball. Moreover, they were first for counter pressure regains. This season, in the away leg of their play-off against Brøndby in August, Salzburg achieved 85 recoveries. This meant that they won the ball back more than any other team in any game so far in the 2021/22 competition.
And when they do recapture the ball, they play it ball forward quickly to exploit the pace of forwards such as Karim Adeyemi. A scorer on his Germany debut against Armenia in September, he won all three of the penalties awarded to Salzburg on Matchday 1 in Seville; he then converted two spot kicks against LOSC on Matchday 2 and found the net again against Wolfsburg. Adeyemi is 19. For the record, their other scorers to date in Group G are 19-year-old Luka Sučić, who is a Serbian midfielder, and 21-year-old Noah Okafor, a Swiss forward.
For them, as for Salzburg, the future looks bright.
Five teams kick off their Champions League fixtures this week with a chance of securing a place in the last 16 – and it is not difficult to spot the odd one out. While Ajax, Bayern München, Juventus and Liverpool have 18 European crowns between them, Salzburg have never made it beyond the Champions League group stage.
Yet a victory for Matthias Jaissle’s men win at Wolfsburg on Tuesday night would carry them through and mean another milestone attained by a club gradually gaining a foothold in Europe’s elite division. Prior to their 2005 takeover by Red Bull they had competed in the continent’s leading club competition just once previously: in 1994/95 under the guise of Casino Salzburg. Fresh from reaching the UEFA Cup final in 1994, they finished third in a tough group that featured that season’s two finalists: defending champions AC Milan and Ajax, the eventual winners (who they actually held to two draws).
Fast forward a quarter of a century or so and the foothold looks more secure for a club located in the foothills of the Alps. Europa League semi-finalists in 2018 and quarter-finalists the following campaign, Salzburg are competing in the Champions League group stage for the third year running and are already well placed to improve on two successive third-placed finishes after back-to-back home wins over LOSC and Wolfsburg.
One thing that the Austrian title-holders do not lack is confidence – the product of a 28-match unbeaten run in all competitions dating back to 28 April. Sevilla coach Julen Lopetegui made this very point before Salzburg opened their Group G programme with a 1-1 draw in southern Spain, warning that here were a team in a winning groove. Indeed Saturday’s 2-2 draw at SV Ried, when they conceded a 92nd-minute equalising goal, was only the second time they have failed to win in 13 Austrian Bundesliga outings this term.
This consistency on the field is a mirror of Salzburg’s approach off it. Jaissle, who replaced Jesse Marsch in the summer, knows the club inside out: he was first employed as Salzburg’s U17s coach, next he left for two seasons in Denmark as assistant coach at Brøndby, then returned in 2019 to coach the U18s before spending six months from January as coach of their feeder club Liefering, in Austria’s second tier. Hence the smooth transition this summer. (Similarly, his predecessor Marsch had a background as New York Red Bulls coach and as RB Leipzig assistant coach before taking the helm at their Austrian sister club.)
Something similar applies to the players too. Liefering, the district in Salzburg where the club’s academy is based, is also the name of their aforementioned feeder team. Of the 16 players who appeared in the 3-1 win over Wolfsburg a fortnight ago, five are Liefering graduates and, as a close observer of the club attests, they benefit from encountering the “same style of play, same formation, same philosophy”.
That style involves speed and energy. Fast transitions to attack are integral to their approach, with Salzburg players swarming around their opponents to win back the ball, profiting from the youthful legs of a team that – against Wolfsburg – had nine players aged 23 or under in its starting XI. Malian midfielder Mohamed Camara, 21, ranks joint-fifth for ball recoveries so far in the group stage, with 27 from his three matches.
Data enthusiasts should note too that Salzburg ranked fourth in last season’s Champions League for the average number of counter pressures per game: the metric for measuring a team’s efforts to win the ball back quickly, exerting pressure within five seconds of losing the ball. Moreover, they were first for counter pressure regains. This season, in the away leg of their play-off against Brøndby in August, Salzburg achieved 85 recoveries. This meant that they won the ball back more than any other team in any game so far in the 2021/22 competition.
And when they do recapture the ball, they play it ball forward quickly to exploit the pace of forwards such as Karim Adeyemi. A scorer on his Germany debut against Armenia in September, he won all three of the penalties awarded to Salzburg on Matchday 1 in Seville; he then converted two spot kicks against LOSC on Matchday 2 and found the net again against Wolfsburg. Adeyemi is 19. For the record, their other scorers to date in Group G are 19-year-old Luka Sučić, who is a Serbian midfielder, and 21-year-old Noah Okafor, a Swiss forward.
For them, as for Salzburg, the future looks bright.
Five teams kick off their Champions League fixtures this week with a chance of securing a place in the last 16 – and it is not difficult to spot the odd one out. While Ajax, Bayern München, Juventus and Liverpool have 18 European crowns between them, Salzburg have never made it beyond the Champions League group stage.
Yet a victory for Matthias Jaissle’s men win at Wolfsburg on Tuesday night would carry them through and mean another milestone attained by a club gradually gaining a foothold in Europe’s elite division. Prior to their 2005 takeover by Red Bull they had competed in the continent’s leading club competition just once previously: in 1994/95 under the guise of Casino Salzburg. Fresh from reaching the UEFA Cup final in 1994, they finished third in a tough group that featured that season’s two finalists: defending champions AC Milan and Ajax, the eventual winners (who they actually held to two draws).
Fast forward a quarter of a century or so and the foothold looks more secure for a club located in the foothills of the Alps. Europa League semi-finalists in 2018 and quarter-finalists the following campaign, Salzburg are competing in the Champions League group stage for the third year running and are already well placed to improve on two successive third-placed finishes after back-to-back home wins over LOSC and Wolfsburg.
One thing that the Austrian title-holders do not lack is confidence – the product of a 28-match unbeaten run in all competitions dating back to 28 April. Sevilla coach Julen Lopetegui made this very point before Salzburg opened their Group G programme with a 1-1 draw in southern Spain, warning that here were a team in a winning groove. Indeed Saturday’s 2-2 draw at SV Ried, when they conceded a 92nd-minute equalising goal, was only the second time they have failed to win in 13 Austrian Bundesliga outings this term.
This consistency on the field is a mirror of Salzburg’s approach off it. Jaissle, who replaced Jesse Marsch in the summer, knows the club inside out: he was first employed as Salzburg’s U17s coach, next he left for two seasons in Denmark as assistant coach at Brøndby, then returned in 2019 to coach the U18s before spending six months from January as coach of their feeder club Liefering, in Austria’s second tier. Hence the smooth transition this summer. (Similarly, his predecessor Marsch had a background as New York Red Bulls coach and as RB Leipzig assistant coach before taking the helm at their Austrian sister club.)
Something similar applies to the players too. Liefering, the district in Salzburg where the club’s academy is based, is also the name of their aforementioned feeder team. Of the 16 players who appeared in the 3-1 win over Wolfsburg a fortnight ago, five are Liefering graduates and, as a close observer of the club attests, they benefit from encountering the “same style of play, same formation, same philosophy”.
That style involves speed and energy. Fast transitions to attack are integral to their approach, with Salzburg players swarming around their opponents to win back the ball, profiting from the youthful legs of a team that – against Wolfsburg – had nine players aged 23 or under in its starting XI. Malian midfielder Mohamed Camara, 21, ranks joint-fifth for ball recoveries so far in the group stage, with 27 from his three matches.
Data enthusiasts should note too that Salzburg ranked fourth in last season’s Champions League for the average number of counter pressures per game: the metric for measuring a team’s efforts to win the ball back quickly, exerting pressure within five seconds of losing the ball. Moreover, they were first for counter pressure regains. This season, in the away leg of their play-off against Brøndby in August, Salzburg achieved 85 recoveries. This meant that they won the ball back more than any other team in any game so far in the 2021/22 competition.
And when they do recapture the ball, they play it ball forward quickly to exploit the pace of forwards such as Karim Adeyemi. A scorer on his Germany debut against Armenia in September, he won all three of the penalties awarded to Salzburg on Matchday 1 in Seville; he then converted two spot kicks against LOSC on Matchday 2 and found the net again against Wolfsburg. Adeyemi is 19. For the record, their other scorers to date in Group G are 19-year-old Luka Sučić, who is a Serbian midfielder, and 21-year-old Noah Okafor, a Swiss forward.
For them, as for Salzburg, the future looks bright.
Five teams kick off their Champions League fixtures this week with a chance of securing a place in the last 16 – and it is not difficult to spot the odd one out. While Ajax, Bayern München, Juventus and Liverpool have 18 European crowns between them, Salzburg have never made it beyond the Champions League group stage.
Yet a victory for Matthias Jaissle’s men win at Wolfsburg on Tuesday night would carry them through and mean another milestone attained by a club gradually gaining a foothold in Europe’s elite division. Prior to their 2005 takeover by Red Bull they had competed in the continent’s leading club competition just once previously: in 1994/95 under the guise of Casino Salzburg. Fresh from reaching the UEFA Cup final in 1994, they finished third in a tough group that featured that season’s two finalists: defending champions AC Milan and Ajax, the eventual winners (who they actually held to two draws).
Fast forward a quarter of a century or so and the foothold looks more secure for a club located in the foothills of the Alps. Europa League semi-finalists in 2018 and quarter-finalists the following campaign, Salzburg are competing in the Champions League group stage for the third year running and are already well placed to improve on two successive third-placed finishes after back-to-back home wins over LOSC and Wolfsburg.
One thing that the Austrian title-holders do not lack is confidence – the product of a 28-match unbeaten run in all competitions dating back to 28 April. Sevilla coach Julen Lopetegui made this very point before Salzburg opened their Group G programme with a 1-1 draw in southern Spain, warning that here were a team in a winning groove. Indeed Saturday’s 2-2 draw at SV Ried, when they conceded a 92nd-minute equalising goal, was only the second time they have failed to win in 13 Austrian Bundesliga outings this term.
This consistency on the field is a mirror of Salzburg’s approach off it. Jaissle, who replaced Jesse Marsch in the summer, knows the club inside out: he was first employed as Salzburg’s U17s coach, next he left for two seasons in Denmark as assistant coach at Brøndby, then returned in 2019 to coach the U18s before spending six months from January as coach of their feeder club Liefering, in Austria’s second tier. Hence the smooth transition this summer. (Similarly, his predecessor Marsch had a background as New York Red Bulls coach and as RB Leipzig assistant coach before taking the helm at their Austrian sister club.)
Something similar applies to the players too. Liefering, the district in Salzburg where the club’s academy is based, is also the name of their aforementioned feeder team. Of the 16 players who appeared in the 3-1 win over Wolfsburg a fortnight ago, five are Liefering graduates and, as a close observer of the club attests, they benefit from encountering the “same style of play, same formation, same philosophy”.
That style involves speed and energy. Fast transitions to attack are integral to their approach, with Salzburg players swarming around their opponents to win back the ball, profiting from the youthful legs of a team that – against Wolfsburg – had nine players aged 23 or under in its starting XI. Malian midfielder Mohamed Camara, 21, ranks joint-fifth for ball recoveries so far in the group stage, with 27 from his three matches.
Data enthusiasts should note too that Salzburg ranked fourth in last season’s Champions League for the average number of counter pressures per game: the metric for measuring a team’s efforts to win the ball back quickly, exerting pressure within five seconds of losing the ball. Moreover, they were first for counter pressure regains. This season, in the away leg of their play-off against Brøndby in August, Salzburg achieved 85 recoveries. This meant that they won the ball back more than any other team in any game so far in the 2021/22 competition.
And when they do recapture the ball, they play it ball forward quickly to exploit the pace of forwards such as Karim Adeyemi. A scorer on his Germany debut against Armenia in September, he won all three of the penalties awarded to Salzburg on Matchday 1 in Seville; he then converted two spot kicks against LOSC on Matchday 2 and found the net again against Wolfsburg. Adeyemi is 19. For the record, their other scorers to date in Group G are 19-year-old Luka Sučić, who is a Serbian midfielder, and 21-year-old Noah Okafor, a Swiss forward.
For them, as for Salzburg, the future looks bright.
Five teams kick off their Champions League fixtures this week with a chance of securing a place in the last 16 – and it is not difficult to spot the odd one out. While Ajax, Bayern München, Juventus and Liverpool have 18 European crowns between them, Salzburg have never made it beyond the Champions League group stage.
Yet a victory for Matthias Jaissle’s men win at Wolfsburg on Tuesday night would carry them through and mean another milestone attained by a club gradually gaining a foothold in Europe’s elite division. Prior to their 2005 takeover by Red Bull they had competed in the continent’s leading club competition just once previously: in 1994/95 under the guise of Casino Salzburg. Fresh from reaching the UEFA Cup final in 1994, they finished third in a tough group that featured that season’s two finalists: defending champions AC Milan and Ajax, the eventual winners (who they actually held to two draws).
Fast forward a quarter of a century or so and the foothold looks more secure for a club located in the foothills of the Alps. Europa League semi-finalists in 2018 and quarter-finalists the following campaign, Salzburg are competing in the Champions League group stage for the third year running and are already well placed to improve on two successive third-placed finishes after back-to-back home wins over LOSC and Wolfsburg.
One thing that the Austrian title-holders do not lack is confidence – the product of a 28-match unbeaten run in all competitions dating back to 28 April. Sevilla coach Julen Lopetegui made this very point before Salzburg opened their Group G programme with a 1-1 draw in southern Spain, warning that here were a team in a winning groove. Indeed Saturday’s 2-2 draw at SV Ried, when they conceded a 92nd-minute equalising goal, was only the second time they have failed to win in 13 Austrian Bundesliga outings this term.
This consistency on the field is a mirror of Salzburg’s approach off it. Jaissle, who replaced Jesse Marsch in the summer, knows the club inside out: he was first employed as Salzburg’s U17s coach, next he left for two seasons in Denmark as assistant coach at Brøndby, then returned in 2019 to coach the U18s before spending six months from January as coach of their feeder club Liefering, in Austria’s second tier. Hence the smooth transition this summer. (Similarly, his predecessor Marsch had a background as New York Red Bulls coach and as RB Leipzig assistant coach before taking the helm at their Austrian sister club.)
Something similar applies to the players too. Liefering, the district in Salzburg where the club’s academy is based, is also the name of their aforementioned feeder team. Of the 16 players who appeared in the 3-1 win over Wolfsburg a fortnight ago, five are Liefering graduates and, as a close observer of the club attests, they benefit from encountering the “same style of play, same formation, same philosophy”.
That style involves speed and energy. Fast transitions to attack are integral to their approach, with Salzburg players swarming around their opponents to win back the ball, profiting from the youthful legs of a team that – against Wolfsburg – had nine players aged 23 or under in its starting XI. Malian midfielder Mohamed Camara, 21, ranks joint-fifth for ball recoveries so far in the group stage, with 27 from his three matches.
Data enthusiasts should note too that Salzburg ranked fourth in last season’s Champions League for the average number of counter pressures per game: the metric for measuring a team’s efforts to win the ball back quickly, exerting pressure within five seconds of losing the ball. Moreover, they were first for counter pressure regains. This season, in the away leg of their play-off against Brøndby in August, Salzburg achieved 85 recoveries. This meant that they won the ball back more than any other team in any game so far in the 2021/22 competition.
And when they do recapture the ball, they play it ball forward quickly to exploit the pace of forwards such as Karim Adeyemi. A scorer on his Germany debut against Armenia in September, he won all three of the penalties awarded to Salzburg on Matchday 1 in Seville; he then converted two spot kicks against LOSC on Matchday 2 and found the net again against Wolfsburg. Adeyemi is 19. For the record, their other scorers to date in Group G are 19-year-old Luka Sučić, who is a Serbian midfielder, and 21-year-old Noah Okafor, a Swiss forward.
For them, as for Salzburg, the future looks bright.
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