On Tuesday, September 21, 2021 at 5:11:44 PM UTC+2, Werner Pichler wrote:
On Tuesday, September 21, 2021 at 2:35:13 PM UTC+2, Werner Pichler wrote:
On Tuesday, September 21, 2021 at 2:21:12 PM UTC+2, Mark wrote:
On Monday, September 20, 2021 at 11:31:12 AM UTC+1, Futbolmetrix wrote:
UPT is an equal opportunity tipping game. Space to the ladies!
Fixtures
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Tier 1
Futbolmetrix - ixion martin
Hartberg - Austria Vienna
Manchester United (women) - Chelsea (women)
Mark - Werner Pichler
Rapid Vienna - Sturm Graz
Arsenal (women) - Manchester City (women)
Sturm Graz
Manchester City
Who are WSG Tirol? Are they anything to do with FC Tirol who went bankrupt about 20 years ago?
How much time do you have?
It is an interesting story, I think.
'WSG' now stands for 'Wattener Sportgemeinschaft'. Wattens is a small city of 8,000 people,
but also home to the Swarovski glass works who have always been a big player in Tyrolean (and
by extension Austrian) football.
Wattens is also situated not far from Innsbruck, the capital of Tyrol, whose main team is Wacker
Innsbruck.
Both teams have gone through many permutations through the years, but basically Wacker
and Wattens are frenemies.
Wacker were founded in 1913 or 1915 (sources differ), but let's begin the story in 1964 when
they became the first team from Tyrol to ever qualify for the top flight. A year later, LASK (from Linz)
became the first non-Viennese club to ever win the Austrian championship, and Wacker soon followed
their lead, finishing runners-up twice before finally winning their first title in the 1970/71 season.
In the meantime, Wattens had become Swarovski's company team (originally the 'WSG'
moniker meant 'Werkssportgemeinschaft') and also got promoted to the Austrian top division
in 1967/68. But the spectre of an ill-conceived league reform was looming - the Austrian FA
planned on reducing the number of teams from 16 to 10 while trying to maintain a strict
'geographical parity' by only allowing in exactly one team from each of the nine Austrian provinces
(and two from Vienna). They pulled it through starting with the 1974/75 season, but the absurdity
of the scheme quickly became apparent as LASK were the 'scheduled' Upper Austrian team, but
it was their cross-city rivals V|uEST (the company team of the local steel works) who became the
1973/74 Austrian champions (in the end, both V|uEST and LASK were allowed to participate, and
poor little Vorarlberg, always the half-Swiss afterthought, got shafted).
Anyway, with that reform in the works, Wacker and Wattens decided to pool their ressources, and
merged their senior teams into a 'Spielgemeinschaft Swarovski Wattens-Wacker Innsbruck',
or 'SSW Innsbruck' in short, also the first time that 'Swarovski' became part of the team name.
Wattens brought a number of renowned players into the marriage, and the combined team
became the main force in Austrian football in the 70's, winning the title four more times (and
finishing runners-up twice), before suffering a shock relegation in 1978/79.
It took two years for them to come back, and in the early 80's SSW Innsbruck were a middling
team with ever increasing financial problems. So in 1986 Swarovski CEO Gernot Langes-Swarovski
took matters into his own hands - the merger between Wacker and Wattens was dissolved
(both continued as amateur teams in the lower leagues, where they both had also kept separate
presences during all those years of the merger), and a new club with a new name and new colours
(basically Red Bull long before Red Bull - but don't ever tell that to Tyrolean football fans, they'll
get mad) called FC Swarovski Tirol (for the first time trying to represent the entire province also
in name) took over the Bundesliga licence.
Success was almost immediate - two more league titles, and they reached the semifinal of the
1986/87 UEFA Cup where they lost against IFK G||teborg. But in the late 80's some imprudent
acquisitions got Swarovski (the glass company) into financial trouble, and they had to scale
down their investments. For one season, 'Wacker Innsbruck' returned, but in 1993 a new entity
was split off, again with new colours - initially called 'FC Innsbruck Tirol', and later 'FC Tirol Innsbruck',
with big promises from 'new investors' who splayed around a lot of money to win the 2000, 2001,
and 2002 Austrian titles (that last one with Jogi L||w as manager) before it all turned out to have
been a huge, unsustainable, and ultimately fraudulent gamble (in the end, only Champions League
millions could - perhaps - have kept them afloat, and they always lost in the qualifiers, another RB
similarity). The one person who probably suffered the biggest individual losses was Gernot Langes-
Swarovski, who at the behest of his 'good friends' on the FC Tirol board in vain poured a lot of his
own money into a club that was in fact rotten to the core.
Anyway, after the big crash FC Tirol was dissolved, and a new club called FC Wacker Tirol (not
Innsbruck, initially) was re-founded in 2002. In order to avoid having to start afresh from the
lowermost level, following some political pressure they immediately entered another merger
with their old partners from Wattens (who, with Gernot Langes-Swarovski as their president,
had always continued to play in the second or third division), and within two years they were back in
the Austrian Bundesliga (dissolving the merger with Wattens once it was no longer needed).
Having gone through purgatory, Wacker also became a much-more ultr|a-minded club, and, with the
failure of all those 'Tirol' pretensions outlined above in mind, began to stress their status as a purely
Innsbruck team, changing the name to FC Wacker Innsbruck in 2007. But with no strong financial
backing (FC Tirol's financial disaster still being very much on any potential local investor's mind,
even to this day) they have basically been a yo-yo club ever since, albeit one with quite a lot of hardcore
fans.
In the meantime, Gernot Langes-Swarovski in 2013 handed the reins of Wattens to his daughter
Diana, and, to put it bluntly, the lady is out for revenge. Eschewing any connection to Wacker, who
in her mind are the heirs to those who swindled her father (who, long sick, has died earlier this year)
she helped Wattens rise back through the ranks, and in 2019 her dreams must have come true -
Wattens got promoted to the top level at the same time that Wacker Innsbruck got relegated.
Moving into Innsbruck's stadium (the one in Wattens no longer adequate for the top level) Diana
Langes-Swarovski changed the club name into WSG Tirol in an evident ploy to oust Wacker and claim
the allegiance of the province, and despite a last twist in the tale as Swarovski (the company) are again
in financial difficulties and this summer dropped their name sponsorship, this is where we stand today.
Diana is quite the astute president with a lot of personal connections that help the club stay afloat
(such as good contacts to the Agnellis, which led to Baden Fredriksen last year and Giacomo Vrioni this
year joining Wattens on loan from Juve), but there's one little problem - WSG Tirol have almost no fans
whatsoever, and certainly no organized ones. Attendance numbers are pitiful.
So you know what would make sense? A merger. But Wacker fans hate Wattens/Tirol, and Diana hates
Wacker.
Did that answer your question?
Update:
After a strong spring season, WSG Tirol (Wattens) are now playing a two-legged playoff (today/Sunday) against
Rapid Wien that determines Austria's fifth European spot and qualification to the Europa Conference League
2nd Qualifying Round. Would be Wattens's first ever European adventure. Juve loanee Vrioni has been brilliant for
them in the league, scoring 18 goals, just one fewer than 30mre4 man Karim Adeyemi.
Wacker Innsbruck meanwhile got caught up (again...) in an ever accelerating downward spiral of financial
mismanagement and dubious investors. They will be forced to declare bankruptcy, and have been denied a licence
for the 2nd division next year. The question now is whether or not they'll be able to continue at the 3rd, regional,
level. It's possible that they will have to re-start far lower, if they get off the ground once more at all.
We'll see what all of this will eventually do to attendance numbers in Tyrol... Ciao,
Werner
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