Jewish Soccer Lives On In Austria

Some good news coming out of Vienna, giving us a reason to pause and pay respects to SC Hakoah Wien, champions of Austria in 1925. Hakoah, a team made up entirely of Jewish players, was founded in 1909 after Jews were prohibited from becoming members of Austrian sports clubs. The club's glory days were in the 1920s and 1930s. Besides the championship season, Hakoah also were the first continental side to beat an English club in England, 5-1 winners over a reserve West Ham side in 1923.

At its height, Hakoah had 30,000 members, many of whom excelled in wrestling, fencing, water polo, and swimming. The 2004 documentary Watermarks chronicles the women's swim team and how one of them refused to go to Hitler's Berlin Olympics in 1936.

In 1938, after the Nazis annexed Austria into Greater Germany, the German FA banned the club and nullified their games. Their stadium was appropriated and given to the Austrian Nazi party. After the war, the club resumed limited activities. Today, the club has about 400 members and its soccer team plays in one of Austria's lower divisions under the name SC Maccabi Wien.

Vienna's Jewish Sports Club, Smashed by Nazis, Gets New Life [Bloomberg]

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Tell Me Something I Don't Already Know

In what is quite the "get" for United Arab Emirates newspaper Al Ittihad, Bahrain's national soccer team coach Hans Peter Briegel has more or less admitted that the West Germany v. Austria group match at Spain '82 was fixed. According to TyC Sports, Briegal, a runner-up with Germany in both 1982 and 1986, said that "he was sorry" for what had happened to Algeria.

While not an outright confirmation that the fix was in, it's good enough for me. For anyone who remembers the controversy, or has read about it, I think it matters. Up until now, that acknowledgment of cheating has been rather hard to come by.

If you recall, the Germans were upset 2-1 by Algeria in their first Group 2 match, but managed to sneak into the second round on the last day of the group with a controversial 1-0 win over Austria, the result advancing both teams at the expense of Algeria. As Algeria had already played its third match the day before, West Germany and Austria knew that a West German win by 1 or 2 goals would qualify them both, while a larger German victory would qualify Algeria over Austria, and an Austrian win would eliminate the Germans. The fourth team in the group, Chile, had already been eliminated. The West German-Austria match has gone down as one of the dodgiest in the history of soccer.

After a FIFA junta ruled that there had not been anything unseemly about the match, they decided that the best way to curb such thoughts in the future would be to have all games, on the final day of the group, kickoff at the same time.

UPDATE: A full quote, courtesy of Spanish daily AS - "We all made the decision, us and them [Austria], to not put too much effort into the match against Austria."

Briegel: Germany cheated to get Algeria eliminated from the World Cup (In Spanish) [TyC Sports]
What's the dodgiest game in football history? [Guardian]
Briegel confesses about Germany-Austria 82 (In Spanish) [AS]

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