Spot the words that don't seem to go along in the headline. Hello?! I mean, Austria?! You have to be kidding me. Austria's biggest success was beating the reigning world champions Germany in the 1978 World Cup at Cordoba. A match that the still remember down south. Since then they haven't achieved anything. They qualified for a few World Cups and Euro Championships, but always crashed out in the group stages. Since being named the co-hosts for next years Euro 2008 they played more like the team that lost to the Faroer Islands in some Qualifying rounds for some major competition in the 1990s. A huge shock to Austrian football. The last major players to emerge from there were striker Toni Polster who played in Spain and Germany or midfielder Andreas Herzog who was nicknamed "Alpen-Maradona".
So now the Austrian Under 20 team beat the USA in this years World Cup and has now advanced to the semifinal against either Spain or the Czech Republic (who will play later). This was quite a surprise to me. I was only able to watch the 2nd half of the extra time, but it seemed that they play a very nice football there. This will be interesting.
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