Austria blueprint should be adopted by Scotland as green-eyed Tartan Army look for positives after Euros pain

Having just watched their team claim a thrilling win over the Netherlands to finish top of Group D, Austrian fans basked in the Berlin sun on Tuesday afternoon.

Ralf Rangnick and his players received a standing ovation as they embraced their supporters at full-time in the Olympiastadion.

In what was probably the match of the tournament so far, Austria were quite magnificent. They chased the Netherlands for ninety minutes and more than deserved their 3-2 victory.

Scotland fans, a team of similar stature, wouldn’t be human if they didn’t watch Austria during this European Championship and feel a certain jealousy. There is also a slight sense of irony in that it was Scotland that essentially ushered in the Rangnick era in Austria.

Three years ago, Scotland played the Austrians twice in World Cup qualifying. A 2-2 draw at Hampden was then followed by a crucial 1-0 win for the Scots in Vienna in September 2021.

That result spelled the end for Franco Foda. By the time Scotland returned to Vienna for a friendly just six months later, Foda had resigned after failing to qualify for the World Cup.

Step forward, Rangnick. The German head coach was coming to the end of his own unhappy spell as manager of Manchester United.

As their team looked for a new identity and playing style, the Austrian FA saw an opportunity and popped the question.

Towards the end of his time at Old Trafford, Rangnick was unfairly ridiculed. He became known as Wreck It Ralf at a club that had pressed the self-destruct button long before his arrival. Over time, we now know that the problems we experienced during that period were far more United problems than Rangnick problems.

This man is clearly one of the most influential coaches in European football over the past 25 years, and his gegenpressing machine is now doing wonders for Austria.

To finish top of a group that also included France and the Netherlands is a fantastic achievement, but one doesn’t suspect that simply reaching the knockout stages will be the limit of Austria’s ambitions.

They are now truly the dark horses of the entire tournament and few would bet on them going deep in the latter stages. Mainly because they have fallen on the more favorable side of the draw, avoiding countries such as Germany, Spain, France and Portugal.

Some people advise Austria to choose Greece and go all the way, but even that comparison feels a bit wrong. When Greece won the European Championship in 2004, they did so with an extremely pragmatic playing style. They prioritized clean sheets at all costs and won all three matches 1-0 in the knockout stages.

That’s not Austria’s style at all. In two years, Rangnick has transformed this group of players into one of the most exciting and attacking teams in Europe.

They play a 4-2-3-1 system and, as the Dutch would now testify, they force opponents to the point of distraction with their energy and aggression.

As they ponder why things went so badly wrong for Scotland in this Euro, the Tartan Army will look at Austria and wonder what could have been. Why? Because, in terms of quality and talent, the Austrian squad is on a similar level to Scotland.

There are no Gareth Bales and no Robert Lewandowskis, two world-class superstars who represented smaller countries and were so often held up as the missing ingredient from Scotland’s perspective.

Austria has players who ply their trade for clubs such as Sturm Graz, Hoffenheim, Mainz and Freiburg. It is a solid base, on which they sprinkle one or two bigger names from Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig. They are an honest, hardworking group of players. But fundamentally, the overall composition of the Austrian squad is no different to Scotland’s.

Steve Clarke had a solid foundation, with bigger names from the likes of Liverpool, Manchester United, Aston Villa and Arsenal.

What he lacked, however, was any sense of ambition. In that respect, Austria is the antithesis of what Scotland has become under Clarke.

They are fearless, while Scotland was weak.

In their three matches, Clarke’s team achieved a combined XG of 0.95, which was easily the lowest of all 24 teams in the tournament.

The opening night in Munich set the tone for everything. Scotland was passive and adventurous. That’s not the players’ fault. That’s a coaching problem.

In contrast, Rangnick has instilled his powerful, demanding style of football. Austria is an adventurous team that plays up front and attacks at every opportunity.

They have a clearly defined playing style, which has allowed them to punch well above their weight in recent years.

Since Rangnick took charge, they have defeated Italy, Germany and now the Netherlands. That’s three major heavyweight scalps in less than two years.

It is results like these that now fuel the belief that Austria could dive deep into these euros. Certainly, none of the so-called top teams will want to meet them.

Clarke will take credit for guiding Scotland back to the promised land of two major tournaments. Rightly so. No one can ever take that away from him.

But he is not exempt from criticism. He is also not without the belief that this group of Scottish players are capable of much more than they have shown in the past year.

In captain Andy Robertson, Scotland have a player who has shown for many seasons that he can flourish and excel in a high-pressure system under Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool.

Similarly, Callum McGregor has done it for years at Celtic under Ange Postecoglou and Brendan Rodgers. Billy Gilmour is a young, energetic midfield technician.

John McGinn and Scott McTominay are two powerful box-to-box operators in the middle of the park. Che Adams is fast and mobile, exactly the type of player needed to apply pressure from the front.

Any idea that Clarke doesn’t have enough good players is nonsense, harkening back to the dark days when Gordon Strachan banged on about genetics.

Clarke does have the right tools. The problem is that he just doesn’t use them properly or in a way that would ever have an impact in a major tournament.

With their fearless approach, Austria has shown how it should be done.

They tore up the script and set these euros on fire. Their followers dare to dream.

Scotland fans will rightly look at that and wonder how differently things could have turned out if they had had a coach who actually showed some ambition.