The Danubian School of football - First Vienna

On the continent it took much longer for the significance of the changes to the off-side rule to be understood. While in England most clubs followed Chapman’s lead within a few years of his innovations, the majority of Europe remained married to the traditional pyramid formation. Ironically it was two of the continent’s greatest anglophiles who most resisted any move to the “third back” system.

Hugo Meisl of Austria was arguably the most significant figure in helping to develop continental football in the pre-WW2 era. Acting as a referee, and administrator and a coach his love for the game showed itself in a desire to be involved in every facet of its organisation. It was as the manager of the Austrian Wunderteam though that his impact was most keenly felt.

Football enjoyed a popularity in Austria in the 1920s which matched that of any nation outside the British Isles and under the guidance of Meisl they constructed a fantastic attacking team. Although they retained a broad allegiance to the classic 2-3-5 formation, their use of centre-forward Matthias Sindelaar in a slightly withdrawn position was extremely effective. Having destroyed Scotland 5-0 in Vienna (admittedly the Scots fielded a weakened team and were badly affected by injuries) they embarked on a string of results which shocked the rest of Europe. Such was the movement of the team (and in particular Sindelaar) that their system became known as the “Danubian whirl”. Indeed the progress of the game in Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary (all quarter-finalists at the 1934 World Cup) gave this school of football its name.

At the heart of the rise of the Danubian school was the influence of English coach Jimmy Hogan. Having left England he coached in Switzerland, Hungary, Holland, Germany and Austria and everywhere he went he instilled in his players the importance of passing and movement. His emphasis on technique was far more welcome on the continent than it was back in England, where the emphasis remained more on stamina and physicality than it did on prowess with the ball. By incorporating Hogan’s teachings, the Danubian school were able to make up for any physical weakness with superior skill.

Especially now that AMC's can't be used as inside forwards on FM this is pretty much impossible to replicate completely so this will be my initial setup.

At some point i'd like to remove the wing backs and have a trio of half backs protecting the back 2 which of course will be risky but as I go along I will be making alterations to make it as close to the original as possible but with the starting squad and only about 2 weeks to sign players before the first competitive game (i'll be doubling this up with the Gundo challenge which really did cut the preseason down to almost zero compared to if I started in 2014) i've gone for inverted wing backs at the minute either side of the half back.

First of all I have to stick to the rules of Gundo's FM15 European Adventure Challenge™. As some of you may know i've had some problems with bugs and a crash on my saves so far and after what happened in my journeyman save on Sunday I decided not to rush in to a new save or thread (even contemplated going back to FM12 at one point) and gave it a good thought about giving myself something to aim for before I started a new save of any kind.

In my search for inspiration I came across an old thread i'd made for Colo Colo on FM11 (I think it was) where I played a narrow 3-3-3-1 with great success and I think that was the last time I really challenged myself properly making an unusual tactic from scratch, usually I start off with a more conventional tactic and when the team gels and I eventually get bored I just switch a few players positions about and change a few roles and maybe tweak the odd little thing Anyway I decided to google other unconventional tactics and reading about the old 2-3-5 formation I seen the variants of it and the Danubian School was one that I was really interested in.

Next up was picking a side to try this which obviously had to be an Austrian club, I didn't want to be one of the bigger sides at this current time but wanted one with history especially around the rough time that this tactic was used and First Vienna fitted the bill perfectly but they aren't playable from the start which is why I decided to double this up with the Gundo challenge because the expectations aren't high for the first season at least (predicted 9th) so it gives me a bit of time to try and perfect the tactic.

Once/if I complete that then i'll try and become manager of the national side and take them to a major tournament if the opportunity arises and see if I can better their 3rd place of 1954 using the same tactic.

Depending on how long it takes to achieve there is also a possibility of adding managers in the future to recreate the Metodo (2–3–2–3) and one of Hungary's WW or 4-6-0 formations and have them challenge the Danubian School.

I've set myself a few targets that i'd like to achieve with the Danubian School (might add more later)

• Unbeaten Season
  
• Score 100 League Goals
  
• Win CL with at least 8 Austrians in the starting XI
  
• Win a major tournament with Austria
  

Career Overview

Season   Division          Position    Achievements
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2015/16  First Division    1st         League and Cup Winners  
2016/17  Premier Division  4th
2017/18  Premier Division  1st         League and Europa League Winners
2018/19  Premier Division  1st         League Winners
2019/20  Premier Division  1st         League Winners
2020/21  Premier Division  1st         League, Champions League and Cup Winners

First Vienna

Managers Thoughts

I've had to patch a squad up pretty quickly just in order to be ready for the new season, thankfully we were given a £650k budget with a bit of space in the wages to move that kitty up to about £1M if need be but for now I think we should have enough to get by but i'll assess the situation again in October when more scout reports come in. The league rules only allow for 7 players that aren't Austrian and only 3 over 21 so that has also made it a bit more difficult as we already have the 3 over age players and only one spot remaining (though Lebedev will become Austrian if he plays another 15 or so more games to free that overage spot)

Love the tactic set up, very interesting. The defence is set up like one of my old tactics I made in FM09 with very great success, your front line much more offensive however. Following.

Love the tactic set up, very interesting. The defence is set up like one of my old tactics I made in FM09 with very great success, your front line much more offensive however. Following.

Thanks a lot mate Interesting you said about the front line, if it was still allowed i'd have 5 in a straight row right at the top of the striker line At some point I will try 3 half backs but I actually think the inverted wing backs are the best option as obviously they tuck in a bit but will still challenge wingers, i'm not sure with half backs the 2 on the outside will be able to do this properly and could cost a lot of goals, especially at the moment with the way this patch is.

I'm not going to make this a tactical thread as such because it is a career thread mainly but I wanted to add something to it that could be fun/interesting so obviously as I go along I will be doing screenshots of the philosophy/set up of the team ect; I will probably post my first set of instructions after 10 games or so (depending how this goes) because I am going in to this without a test of any kind so there could be a lot of changes from the tactic I have now in 10 games time

My initial start is to control the game, with the big gap between the "3" in the formation and then the 5 in attack i've gone for fluid as it suits best what I want to achieve

I've gone for 13 instructions for now but if I feel they aren't working I may change the tempo to quicker or untick that completely and also remove slower passing... as I said it's work in progress at the minute

That is an awful lot of shouts. Could have real difficulty tactically with those shouts and the standard shape. I'll follow this out of morbid curiosity more than anything else

Fwiw, I like the idea of a First Vienna save. My current idea with Union Berlin stemmed from somewhat of an obsession with taking a 'lesser' side from a major city and making them bigger than their counterpart. I initially was going to do this with Slavia Praha, but then decided to look elsewhere - First Vienna were my first choice but they were too far down the leagues and it would require countless save/reloads to get them into the first division and I couldn't be arsed with that.

I hope you do well with them. The tactics will be the hardest part of all, which is saying something considering the strength of the 'big three' in Austria (Austria and Rapid Wien, RB Salzburg).

Good luck

Cheers mate. It seems a lot of instructions I agree (saying that I used 16 or 17 on my FM14 tactic which scored bucketloads ) but the original tactic relied on slow passing which straight away used 5 of them. The pass ball in to space and push further up is how I plan on shortening the gap between the bank of 3 of and the front 5. It is possible that I will remove the pass ball in to space, work ball in to box, lower tempo and shorter passing if we aren't killing teams off but I feel the close down, prevent short distribution and close down more will make sure the front 5 do some defencive work for the team. We'll see as it goes along though

Union Berlin were actually a tempting side for me too when I was looking at what to do but this one just seemed right. I don't think you'd have had to worry about getting First Vienna as playable, in my save their rep is the 3rd highest in the division - 2 places higher than the side relegated from the top flight last year in my save

First Vienna FC 1894 June - August 2015/16

Managers Thoughts

That was a better than expected start considering our predicted finish. The tactic is really working well (better than expected tbh) we are averaging about 60% of the ball at the moment which is really surprising this early even though it was my long term intention, one problem we do have however is finishing sides off which is why i've took the gamble on Achahbar as I hope he can make a difference. Long term I want him to be able to play as a shadow striker though as we are lacking quality in AMC positions so he's already training for that role.

Brilliant start mate. Pleased to hear the tactic is working well. The real test of the tactic will be whenever you become a smaller side compared to everyone else (when you go up again), but obviously you're still new to this division so it's impressive to see it's working well already. To win over half of your games in the first quarter of the season is really good going and sets a nice benchmark for the rest of the season. Hopefully first year promotion is on the cards Not that I'm putting pressure on you or anything

Great idea.

Brilliant start mate. Pleased to hear the tactic is working well. The real test of the tactic will be whenever you become a smaller side compared to everyone else (when you go up again), but obviously you're still new to this division so it's impressive to see it's working well already. To win over half of your games in the first quarter of the season is really good going and sets a nice benchmark for the rest of the season. Hopefully first year promotion is on the cards Not that I'm putting pressure on you or anything

Cheers, I did lose the next 2 after that update though so maybe it will need a bit more work Bit hard to judge at the minute though because there are injuries to key players too so i'll review it once everyone is fit

Tbh bar financially i'm not too bothered if we are nowhere near coming up yet, there's only one promotion spot so if you do go up without a decentish squad you're automatically hoping 2-3 teams that are more experienced in the division have a bad year, at least when 2 go up you're level with the other side and only hoping for one more side to have a bad year.

Finances aren't looking too great either, just gone in to the red so our saving hope is the chairman is willing to listen to offers so hopefully a takeover will happen sooner rather than later.

Great idea.

Cheers delta, I was really close to joining you in terms of going back a few FM's but knowing those match engines so well I decided that it'd probably be too easy so took the risk with FM15. If anything goes wrong with this save that isn't bad results based (be it a bug, crash or unfair sacking) i'll be joining you and deleting this one completely

Nice concept, I used that defensive setup in FM 14 and worked well, I'm going to follow this experiment closely.

Looking forward to this!

First Vienna FC 1894 September - November 2015/16

Managers Thoughts

Very happy with the way things are going so far, we've had a lot of injuries to deal with that certainly weakened the side so we've done really well to stay in touch.

Achahbar has turned out to be a total crock he's played 3 games and had a couple of weeks out at least after each one I'm hoping that improves after the winter break otherwise he will have to go in the summer as we can't afford to pay a crock each week and his foreign spot could be better used as well.

We are currently in the process of being taken over by a consortium, there are a few players i've identified so I could really do with this being resolved one way or the other before January as I do have a couple of targets I would like to bring to the club.

Nice concept, I used that defensive setup in FM 14 and worked well, I'm going to follow this experiment closely.

Looking forward to this!

Cheers lads, i'm really hoping that once i'm in a position to I can swap the wing backs and try the 3 half backs, how this works I feel will really push the experiment to the limit

Some good news over the Christmas period with a board takeover

Unusually after being told I may have to leave the club I was given the vote of confidence barely a week later without even having to play a game The finances should see us through to the end of the season now as it's looking unlikely i'll be signing any players for fees. I've managed to get the youth coaching improved for a 2nd time this season which takes that to a good standard now.

Interesting idea! Just wondering why BW Liz are in the league though as in real life they're in the 3rd Tier? After all, there's only one Team in Linz and we can't be bothered with thse upstarts in blue... ;-) will be following this though

One team gets relegated and one team goes into a relegation play-off.

I guess First Vienna and BW Linz both got promoted and judging by images etc, I'd hazard a guess that Linz got promotion via play-offs.

Note that D_M fast-forwarded a year in order to ensure he was playing as First Vienna, as they aren't playable at the start of the game unless you have a user-created database.

No, I used to live in Linz and they definately didn't get promoted. i think Liefering did instead. Strange. Ah, didn't notice he fast forwarded a ear so maybe they got promoted then...

Yeah that's what I mean, First Vienna start the game in the 3rd tier alongside Linz. Both must have got promoted on Dexter's game in the first season. He didn't start this save until the second season

Yeah that's what I mean, First Vienna start the game in the 3rd tier alongside Linz. Both must have got promoted on Dexter's game in the first season. He didn't start this save until the second season

D'oh. Can't understand how they got promoted, they're flipping useless

Yeah what Jownie said is right, I holidayed the first season and saved just before the reset date for 2015/16 in case they didn't come up at the first attempt. Thankfully for me they did (To be fair their rep is very high in Austria in FM so that makes it easier for non playable sides to come up)

First Vienna FC 1894 December - March 2015/16

Youth Intake

Managers Thoughts

A very good start to the new year for us which sees pull away at the top by a decent margin. The football we've been playing has been superb for the majority of the season and now i've decided on my first choice back 5 the silly goals we were conceding early on have mostly been cut out. To give you an idea of how well we are doing it is rare one of my sides dominate a divisions stat board like this

12 to 15 points from the last 10 games or so should be enough to see us as champions and now we are in this position so late in the season my previous mindset of wanting to stay in the division a year has gone out of the window and hopefully we can meet our target.

We are through to the Cup semi after this remarkable win

What makes this even better is just how dominant Red Bull are

First Vienna FC 1894 April - May 2015/16

Managers Thoughts

The season certainly went better than expected. We came pretty much straight out of the blocks after the winter break and took a huge grip on the division and played some fantastic football that in the main teams just couldn't cope with. The highlight of the season has to be going to Red Bull Salzburg and winning, that in itself was a lot harder than the cup final.

One thing that surprised me with the tactic was we managed to score a healthy amount of goals, usually when I try and play possession football my sides do have a lack of cutting edge at times so to hit the 90 mark with this side was pretty good going. I'm not going to make any changes to the tactic for this season as I feel if can got out and beat top flight sides with this tactic then it gives us a chance. The other thing is according to reports at least 3/4 players were barely good enough for that division so if it can do that well with poorer players in the side i'd like to see how it goes in it's current form with a squad of roughly the same ability as the division we are in so I can work out from there what changes need doing if any before I disrupt what is obviously at least a half decent tactic.

We averaged between 60 and 65% possession in most games even hitting the 70% mark a few times as well. I expect this to drop a bit this season but we have added some quality too over the summer

That is a decent improvement on last year but I would have liked to get a goalkeeper in too but unfortunately the funds weren't there, hopefully we can address that around Christmas time.

For the first time ever i've headed the leaderboard for a division on Steam

I am actually more impressed though with being able to grab 2nd spot for the total points in Austria, that has to be pretty rare for a 2nd tier club

Career Overview

Season   Division          Position    Achievements
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2015/16  First Division    1st         League and Cup Winners                

Loving the tactic! Congrats on the title

Brilliant stuff! Fantastic first season. The win against Red Bull Salzburg was a corker. My Austrian save was one of my favourites, so nice to see someone else doing one.

Interesting tactic Dexter looks like a good one to build as you go and very attacking, im currently doing the same with 4312 in a journeyman save and its made it the best save in awhile.

Well done Dexter, looks like the tactic is working exactly how you wanted it to.

Loving the tactic! Congrats on the title

Thanks mate, it was a better season than i'd thought at the beginning tbh

Brilliant stuff! Fantastic first season. The win against Red Bull Salzburg was a corker. My Austrian save was one of my favourites, so nice to see someone else doing one.

Cheers, when they pulled back to 2-2 I feared the worst obviously but thankfully there was enough left to grab a winner

Interesting tactic Dexter looks like a good one to build as you go and very attacking, im currently doing the same with 4312 in a journeyman save and its made it the best save in awhile.

Thanks, I really expected a season in the bottom half while I altered things but considering the amount of instructions in the tactic there was never a reason to change anything, that may change though if I stick with my plan to have 3 half backs once we are a bit more established

Well done Dexter, looks like the tactic is working exactly how you wanted it to.

Thanks mate, the only thing I have a problem with so far is the amount of goals we let in, the problem is I know my goalkeeper was only a decent player for first division sides and bar one player the defence isn't great either so I don't really want to change anything in the tactic yet until we are on a level playing field with other sides in the division. Once that happens and the defence still looks dodgy i'll look in to changing things.

Working really well already

First Vienna FC 1894 June - September 2016/17

Managers Thoughts

Not had much playing time recently but finally got a few games in last night and considering the injuries we've had i'm pretty happy with the start to the season because we are seeming to lose a key player per game at the moment which is frustrating, especially with the fixture list we have with Europe.

The win in Germany certainly has to be the highlight, how on earth we pulled that off i'll never know and in reality we were lucky to get a draw at home but obviously i'll take it

We have 6 first team players out for 4 weeks or more and another 3 out for at least that long too so i'm not expecting much in September and October but at least with a few international weeks things should start to look better by late October/early November with any luck.

Working really well already

Cheers mate, been surprised that i've not had to change anything so far but I maintain the real test of the tactic will be if I can keep the club in the division for 2 seasons and the squad should be more on a par in terms of players with the rest of the division by the start of season 3 in the league.

Just caught up with this for the first time in a while.

Jesus christ mate, what a first season! Fantastic achievements. Hopefully you can go places with the team. Loving this.

Surprising - but brilliant - to see that you manage to get battered off the big sides but still pull out a victory. I really thought you'd struggle against the big sides because of the 4 CAMs and WBs. Thought you'd be too open.

KUTGW mate. Superb stuff.

The game against Wolfsburg reminds me of Celtic vs Barcelona in the champions league.

Just caught up with this for the first time in a while.

Jesus christ mate, what a first season! Fantastic achievements. Hopefully you can go places with the team. Loving this.

Surprising - but brilliant - to see that you manage to get battered off the big sides but still pull out a victory. I really thought you'd struggle against the big sides because of the 4 CAMs and WBs. Thought you'd be too open.

KUTGW mate. Superb stuff.

Cheers mate, that Wolfsburg game has really given me confidence that there is enough in the tactic to actually win big prizes once better players start to come in. I know the possession wasn't as good as we'd been getting in the league games but with our squad that was always to be expected I guess.

I've not really been concerned about using the wing backs (though agree even from using them in the last FM) that it does leave you open but the gap between the DM and AMC's is pretty big. I wouldn't have a problem with the gap if there's 2 in there but obviously under the rules i've set myself the proper tactic is 3 half backs and in order to keep the original shape of that the only way I can do it is to move the wing backs in and at this moment we don't have a strong enough team to do it which is why I made the wing backs inverted ones for the moment and that also means I am sticking to the lines in the formation which won't be altered no matter how things go.

If we can get some funds in for new players i'm looking forward to seeing what happens with moving the wing backs inside as it'll be interesting to see if the outside 2 move towards the touchline when wingers attack. If they don't do it automatically then i'll have to consider using OI's to have wingers marked and see how that goes.....but i'm getting miles ahead of myself here

The game against Wolfsburg reminds me of Celtic vs Barcelona in the champions league.

It was just something I didn't expect at all Saying that scoring goals has never been our problem, we've managed at least 1 in every game under my management. The defence scares the hell out of me though

This is madness

Woah....

Leading 3-2 on the 45th minute...go in at half-time losing 3-4?! Craziness.

Well that has to be the best match ever three goals in injury time is just :O

I've never seen anything like it on FM ever For some reason though even at 5-3 down I had a slight feeling we could get a draw, which we did pull back for all of 2 mins then they went 6-5 up and I gave up hope as it wasn't looking our day

First Vienna FC 1894 September - December 2016/17

Managers Thoughts

I really don't think i've encountered a season as strange as this. There is lots to be pleased with but also a lot to be concerned about. Obviously as a newly promoted club being in 4th place and pretty much safe by Christmas is a fantastic achievement, especially as we've had injuries beyond belief at times but something is going wrong when you concede 82 goals by Christmas. I just can't put my finger on it and this taking to account we've probably not got the quality most of the division has (or certainly not the back 5 anyway).

I was hoping the board would make some funds available in the winter break to try and strengthen but we've had no luck there so it is a case of sticking with what we have and see what happens, if we stay where we are that gives us Europe again but 5th may be good enough if one of the teams above wins the FA Cup.

First Vienna FC 1894 January - May 2016/17

Managers Thoughts

I'd have happily taken 4th place at the start of the season and in fact I am happy with the position but the defence has really got to me and it feels a bit of a disappointment conceding so many as it makes me wonder how much better we could have done if things were tighter back there. With that in mind 4 of our 7 signings this summer were at the back 6

I don't think these signings will completely solve the problem but there are some really big improvements back there especially in goal and DM and if we concede anything like the 120 goals we did last year then i'll have to look to make big changes to this tactic. As the money was there once I was satisfied with the back for this year I decided to add a little to the attacking 3rd too because with the injuries we had last year we were short at times so I felt it was important to add there too.

I have no real aim for the season but I think considering we've improved the side considerably 4th again should be the minimum

Career Overview

Season   Division          Position    Achievements
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2015/16  First Division    1st         League and Cup Winners  
2016/17  Premier Division  4th              

You're a very exciting team to watch!

Loving the crazy scorelines and the old school system. An excellent couple of seasons so far

You're a very exciting team to watch!

Not for me, i'm pulling my hair out

Loving the crazy scorelines and the old school system. An excellent couple of seasons so far

Don't mind the odd crazy score but would be nice to score 4/5/6 and keep a clean sheet for a change

First Vienna FC 1894 June - September 2017/18

Managers Thoughts

Though the goals against column still isn't ideal I really can't blame the players for that at the moment because it was looking a bit improved until a hideous game against Altach where we lost 6 players to injury during the game and 2 more came out of it with knocks I never save the game before a game which is just as well because in this instance if I did the temptation to reload may have been too great, fuming is not the word and as you can tell the effects of that are still winding me up now because i've had to throw everything in to the Europa for financial reasons and it's really set us back in the league when in reality even with last seasons amount of injuries with this improved squad we should have been able to cope better.

On to the Europa, we've beaten 3 good sides to make the group, the Sporting game was a huge surprise just as Wolfsborg was at the same stage last year but we deserved a bit of luck of at the moment as not much else has gone our way.

Something I didn't notice was the board are extending our ground by nearly 3k seats which will take it to 8,366 so we are playing our home games at the Ernst-Happel-Stadion which should be great for finances because there is at least 7 games to come we should get over 10k in there, the rest going by early games will be around 7 and half to 8k which is still an improvement on last year.

The Europa group is another tough one but hopefully we can get a few points again, beyond that i'm still not expecting much.

First Vienna FC 1894 September - December 2017/18

Managers Thoughts

Bit happier at the half way point than I was in the previous report, the goals against column yet again isn't great but I do see a general improvement after removing short passing and tight marking from a couple of the player instructions so hopefully with a better standard of player we can reduce that even more.

Delighted with our league position at this stage, Red Bull are without a doubt the strongest side in the league and they'll probably take some catching for a few seasons more yet and I expect with good prize money for making the group stage of the CL and finishing 3rd in their group Austria Wien will be stronger next year too so it is really important we finish 2nd this season and grab the 2nd CL spot otherwise those 2 clubs could be miles away from us for a while.

Something I didn't mention earlier is that Austria are 13th in the rankings thanks to Red Bull mostly but this year Austria Wien made the CL group as I mentioned which was decent as a best placed side, ourselves, Red Bull and Rapid made the Europa group with us and Red Bull getting out of it which means 3 clubs are still in it after Christmas which is excellent news and should really help the nations rep which obviously would do my club no harm financially. We play Dinamo in the 1st knockout which is a tricky but hopefully winnable tie.

We dispatched of Dinamo in the first knockout stage and faced Roma next, I has happy with the result of the first leg

But didn't expect to win over both

I thought we were dead and buried but look at the goal times To say I celebrated a little would be an understatement

Celtic in the quarter final await us

WOW! Great result!!

Best defense is an even better offense.

Great work against Roma!