Ahead of the FIFA U-17 World Cup™ in Qatar, the Austrian camp is full of optimism. Hermann Stadler’s charges held their own against the likes of Spain and Germany in the second round of UEFA qualifying and are now unbeaten for over a year.
FIFA spoke to Stadler before the final competition, with the experienced coach revealing the challenges his team had to overcome to find their current style of play and looking ahead to the tournament.
Hermann Stadler: That it will soon be under way, and that we will finally be able to test ourselves against the best in the world in our age group. The anticipation is immense, for every single one of us. The whole set-up and the experience of playing in Qatar will be something special for every player.
I think you have to be really good technically because players now question a lot more than they used to, including through social media. Football has developed so much over the last 20 years; it’s now more dynamic and fast-paced. The players also want to be more involved. That’s also what we want, to make them feel appreciated and part of it all.
Certainly. But as I said, I’m now 20 years older [than when I started working with youth national teams]. I like to surround myself with young people because that keeps me young, too. I think you can learn a lot from the players.
Doing one thing doesn’t mean you can’t do the other as well. When it comes to the U-15, U-16 and U-17 age groups, our focus is certainly on education and the players. We want those players to make it all the way to the [Austrian] Bundesliga or to the senior team. It’s vital that training is at the forefront of that. But when it comes to a World Cup, where every player has a great platform to develop and show off their skills, it’s of course also about the results, especially in knockout matches, because then it’s all about progression or elimination.
Playing at such a high level and having the opportunity to test themselves against the best in the world means that every player can kick on. You don’t play games like that at club level every day or every week. That’s why EURO or World Cup matches are extremely important for the boys’ development.
Above all, we want to be brave and proactive. We want to try to impose our game on the opposition; that’s the first thing. We want to be compact, defend courageously, win the ball back high up the pitch, transition quickly and then capitalise on all of that. We’re a small country, so it’s all the more important for us to seize the opportunity that the World Cup offers us by playing confident and courageous football.
Yes, exactly. Those results spoke for themselves. If you’d asked me a year ago if we’d make it to the World Cup, I’d have said: “No chance, never!” We just didn’t have any consistency in our game. It all came together in our qualifier in Denmark, though. We’d just put in a really poor performance against Luxembourg, so we sat down and said: “It can’t go on like this. We’re not going to achieve anything.”
So, we changed the system and our approach, and we went on to beat the Danes with an outstanding display. We then took that aggressive, active and brave style of play into the second round against Germany, Norway and Spain, and we did exactly the same more recently in our final friendlies against the Germans and the Italians. The boys know that they have been unbeaten for a year by playing this style of football. If we take our principles out onto the pitch as a team, then we can also be successful at the World Cup.
From that point of view, it must also be very exciting that you will now be coming up against opponents from outside of Europe, too. At the World Cup, your opponents in the group stage will be Mali, New Zealand and Saudi Arabia.
We’ll be well prepared for our opponents, of course. We’ve analysed video footage, and we know that we’ll be up against different approaches. We’ve played some good football in Europe over the last year – in terms of results and performances – but when we open our World Cup campaign against the Saudis on 5 November, it’ll all start from scratch again. If we take that confidence, courage and momentum with us to Qatar, then I believe we can make our mark in the group.
