Rapid achieved a respectable win away from Red Bull Salzburg in the Bundesliga hit on Sunday. The Hütteldorfer fought a 1-1 draw with the champions and table leaders after goals from Benjamin Sesko (1st) and Leopold Querfeld (21st) and thus made positive headlines after the turbulence of the past few weeks.
After the last six league wins in a row, the “Bulls” lost points again. The lead over the closest pursuer, Sturm Graz, shrank to four points. 1-0 after 17 seconds The signs for Rapid were anything but good. The statistics revealed eleven championship duels with Salzburg without a win before kick-off, in Wals-Siezenheim they hadn’t scored for five years. And the game started very badly: Rapid started, lost the ball quickly, Luka Sucic hit a long pass to the front, Querfeld made a positional mistake and Sesko was the beneficiary – the Slovenian defeated Rapid goalie Niklas Hedl after 17 seconds. Anyone who was assuming a Salzburg victory at this point was quickly taught otherwise. Rapid delivered a remarkable reaction to the quick 0:1, pressed courageously, repeatedly forced the home side to make mistakes and became dangerous several times – including in the eighth minute when Salzburg goalkeeper Philipp Köhn troubled a Nicolas Kühn volley would have. At the following corner, too, Köhn was challenged by an attempt by Martin Moormann. Another minute later, Roman Kerschbaum shot wide from a good position. In this phase, the Rapidlers, who started with a back three, with Marco Grüll and Patrick Greil only sitting on the bench, showed perhaps their best performance of the season. This was rewarded in the 21st minute: Bernardo was unable to clear his own sixteen after a throw-in, Querfeld grabbed the ball and hit it from an acute angle via the inside rod. Shortly after, Salzburg had to deal with another setback – Dijon Kameri left the field with a shoulder injury.Salzburg much better after the breakNevertheless, the “Bulls” got the game under control towards the end of the first half, more than an offside goal by Roko Simic (30th) but did not look out. The second half brought a different picture. Salzburg played with much more pressure and almost took the lead again with a quick goal, but Martin Koscielnik deflected a header from Simic with his head onto his own crossbar (47′). Salzburg continued to set the tone, Sesko checked Hedl (60′) and headed just over (79′) and failed again at Hedl’s best chance (83′). In addition, Michael Sollbauer saved a shot from Sekou Koita on the line (88th). The Viennese managed relatively little on the offensive, with the exception of a Kühn miss (64th) and a Pejic header parried by Köhn. Nevertheless, it was enough for the guests to get a point that meant a morale injection and coach Ferdinand Feldhofer could save the job.
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