Welcome everybody to Soccer 101. My name is Taylor Rockwell, and today we're going somewhere that is easy to overlook as a footballing nation, but has had a massive influence on world football throughout the years.

It's Austria, a place.

And I say this without trying to be overtly critical, because I am one of them, that three out of four Americans could probably not point two on a map.

Austria is a confusing one.

This week, we're spending some time with the Austrian top flight.

How long has it existed?

What does it look like today?

How did a competition that once helped shape modern football end up as one of Europe's great talent laboratories?

We'll run through the league's winding history.

It's constantly evolving format.

The big clubs and dynasties of the past and why one team now towers over the rest. Graham Ruffin,

are you excited to get into all three things Austria, or like view behind the curtain, a nation

we've been planning to discuss for like a month and a half now. Yeah, I am more than ready to talk

about the other Bundesliga, which is actually

the title of an Austrian football podcast that I've done into once or twice over the year. I've

always enjoyed that as a podcast title. Yeah, we planned on doing this, I think, before Christmas,

and then I think one of us was ill or both of us was ill, or it just didn't happen. I think it was one day where we were like, it's Christmas break period. Yeah. New Year? New Year. All right. And here we are. So Graham has his suit on. He's ready to head to a V&E's coffee house to discuss tactical philosophy. With that in mind, Graham, you are a noted soccer sicko. What was your

familiarity with the league with some of the clubs prior to this episode?

It didn't have a huge exposure, to be honest, obviously some names of clubs like Red Bull Salisberg.

We've obviously gotten exposure to them to the Champions League, some of the Vienna clubs as well.

But it's not a league that is really on my radar. I've written a couple times about it for the newsletter that occasionally you'll hear about players, like talented players, coming through the Austrian pipeline, which is obviously quite prolific, a certain Erling Halland, of course, coming through at Red Bulls Salzburg a few years ago. And so occasionally I will dip into the Austrian Boons League then. But no, I didn't have a very deep knowledge.

And to be honest, it sounds like you've got a deeper knowledge of the kind of tactical origins and influence of Austria.

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