FK Austria Wien - History - Frank Stronach and The New Millennium

Frank Stronach and The New Millennium

After a period without any title (last title season 1992–1993), Austria Wien was taken over by billionaire Frank Stronach of the Magna concern in 1999, the name of the club changing into FK Austria Memphis Magna. He invested much money into the club, buying many top players, so they won the title again in the season 2002–2003 (36 matches, goal difference +31), after a very good start of the season (12 matches, goal difference +19). Despite this coach and ex-player Walter Schachner was fired. His successor Christoph Daum produced weaker results (24 matches, goal difference +12), yet Austria won the national Cup. Austria Wien had a three times higher budget than the average league club (as of 2007 Red Bull Salzburg has the highest budget in the Austrian Bundesliga).

In 2004 the name Memphis was deleted. Austria was known for their very fancy and creative style of playing football which on the downside has frequently led to unnecessary losses and unnecessary draws and makes the team somewhat unpredictable. In the spectacular 2004/05 season the team reached the quarter final of the UEFA Cup, in which the Italian team Parma FC proved to be the better club by eliminating Austria on away goals (1:1, 0:0); in the league Austria finished only 3rd, however, the team wasn't considered weak (goal difference +40 (64–24))! On 21 November 2005, Frank Stonach decided to resigne from his post. As a result several players like topscorer Roland Linz, Vladimír Janočko, Joey Didulica, Libor Sionko, Filip Šebo and Sigurd Rushfeldt were transferred or signed contracts for other teams in the summer 2006. The highly successful 2005–2006 season concluded with the league championship (although with a goal difference of +18 (51–33)), and the national Cup against Mattersburg (3–0) under Austria's belt!

The season 2006–2007 seemed to result in a small disaster as the team found it difficult to cope with their significantly reduced budget and resulting loss of most of their key players. After losing 1–4 on aggregate from Benfica in the preliminary round of the Champions League, the team managed to qualify (against Legia Warsaw winning 2–1 on aggregate) for the Group Phase of the UEFA Cup-tournament, but the 1st match was lost 1–4 at home to Zulte Waregem (Belgium). Thomas Parits (ex-player Austria Wien 1964–1970, 1977–1979 and ex-coach Austria Wien 1984–1985) became the new general manager and after losing 3 days later 4–0 away to Salzburg (firing of manager and ex-player Peter Stöger and Dutch coach and ex-football-player Frank Schinkels), Georg Zellhofer became the new coach. In the Group Phase of the UEFA Cup-tournament Austria Wien collected 0 points (goal difference −8 (1–9)), in the entire European Cup-tournament a goal difference of −10 (4–14)! In the league championship things also went completely wrong as the possibility existed that Austria could relegate for the 1st time in history (however, only through mid season). After 21 rounds the club ranked at the bottom of the table (10th, Budesliga). After the winter break Austria managed to finish 6th (midst of the table, goal difference 0 (43–43) in 36 rounds), yet they won the Austrian National Cup, the ÖFB-Stiegl-Cup.

The 1st half of the 2007–2008 season had been a good one as Austria was top of the Bundesliga in week 7 and from weeks 9 through 21. However, performances were not always impressive (round 10 till round 23: 14 rounds, goal difference 0) and Austria dropped to the 3rd position in the league table just before winter break (three-way tie for top at 36 points, goal differential +8). In the UEFA Cup-tournament Austria didn't perform much better than in the 2006–2007 season. Indeed the two qualification rounds (4 matches) had been successful: goal difference +3 (9–6), but in the Group Phase things went wrong again: 4 matches only yielded 1 point and a goal difference of −5 (1–6) (elimination). Total goal difference this tournament had not been that bad as in 2006–2007: -2 (10–12). In the end Austria finished 3rd in the 07/08 Bundesliga, succumbing only to Rapid Vienna and Red Bull Salzburg.

The summer of 2008 brought notable changes for Austria Vienna. Twelve players left the club, among them key players like Sanel Kuljic and Yüksel Sariyar, who went and joined Frank Stronach's newly founded team FC Magna in Austria's second division.

The Betriebsführervertrag with Stronach's company Magna expired, which gave the club a wholly new structure. On 1 July 2008 it was given back its original name FK Austria Wien, without any sponsor name included for the first time in 30 years. Austrian players like Michael Madl, who came back on loan from Wacker Innsbruck, or Lukas Mössner from SK Austria Kärnten joined the team. In addition to them Austria recruited Chinese international Sun Xiang, who became the first Chinese to play in Austria's Bundesliga.