On November 11th there was a meeting in Vienna between the team council of the national team and the ÖFB leadership. Team captain David Alaba had traveled specifically from Madrid to Vienna to attend the meeting with the President Klaus Mitterdorfer and its four vice presidents to attend. It was about the desire Bernhard Neuhold as managing director and the way in which the team players had previously been communicated with.
You should concentrate on playing football was a message that came from the Presidium meeting got through to the players after the team had campaigned for Neuhold to stay. Alaba, Arnautovic and Co. didn’t want to let that happen. What exactly was discussed at last Monday’s meeting initially remained secret. It was Silence agreed.
This agreement but now it became broken. And was from Vice President Johann Gartner. The boss of the Lower Austrian Football Association gave it NOP on Monday in an interview in which he spoke of the players threatening a strike.
A serious accusation. Would they actually do theirs for this cause? Career trauma the World Cup participation put at risk? The KURIER investigated the matter and initially confronted Gartner itself about it. When asked about this on Tuesday, the 74-year-old said: “I haven’t even read it yet. I have to look at it first.”
Is the long-time official now denying his statements? “I am often quoted even though I haven’t said anything,” says the retired mayor of the municipality of Ziersdorf.
David Alaba in any case has little understanding for it. When asked by KURIER, he said: Team captain: “Mr Gartner is telling an untruth here. We never threatened not to play. My colleagues on the players’ council can confirm this, as can the president and the other vice-presidents who were present at the conversation.”
Josef Geisler and Gerhard Götschhofer When asked, they also confirmed that there was never any talk of a strike by the players. “That didn’t even begin to happen and is a baseless allegation,” says Götschhofer, shaking his head at his counterpart from Lower Austria.