History
In the year 1894, with the First Vienna Football Club, the first football team of the country was created in Vienna. From this nucleus, the Austrian football federation was established in 1904. Already one year after the establishment, Austria became a member of the international football federation FIFA and hosted the fifth FIFA congress in 1908.
The milestones of the federation and past football history were the years 1930 to 1933, 1950 to 1954 and then 1958 as well as 1978, 1982, 1990 and 1998 with the participation of Austria at the World Cup.
Hugo Meisl was one of the best-known personalities in the beginnings of the Austrian Football Association. Meisl's greatest triumph should be the participation with a team of Austrian amateurs in the final of the 1936 Summer Olympics, where they fell victims to Italy with 1:2. Until today, it remained the only final, which Austria reached in an important international tournament. Meisl became 1927 General-Secretary and manager/coach of the federation.
Meisl had huge success and remained unbeaten from 12 April 1931 to 23 October 1932 in 14 successive matches. The highlights of this series were the 6:0 (Berlin) and 5:0 (Vienna) victories against Germany. A 3:4 defeat against England on 7 December 1933 at London's stadium terminated the run of being unbeaten. The 1950s saw a sequel to the tradition of this miracle team (the 1930s heroes were named "Wunderteam"), with their well-known football greats such as Ernst Ocwirk (twice captain of the FIFA World Selection Team), Ernst Happel, Gerhard Hanappi and Walter Zeman. The FIFA World Cup 1954 ranks among being most successful in Austrian Football Association history. Twenty years after being in 4th place in the FIFA World Cup 1934 held in Italy, Austria returned to the circle of the best teams again.
Read more about this topic: Austrian Football Association
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