Austria Vienna starts the European Cup season strongly with a 2-0 win!

Austria Vienna starts the European Cup season strongly with a 2-0 win!

On Thursday evening, July 24, 2025, Vienna Austria was able to celebrate a successful start to the new European Cup season. As part of the UEFA Conference League qualification, the team was able to defeat the Georgian cup winners FC Spaeri 2-0 at the Franz Horr Stadium and create a promising starting position for the second leg. Coach Stephan Helm was proud of the victory, but at the same time emphasized the importance of the remaining games.

The match aroused great hopes among the spectators, Austria got off to a good start right from the start. Led by a strong Dominik Fitz, who describes the team as dominant and full of chances right from the start, the possibilities were numerous. Manfred Fischer scored the first goal in the 8th minute. He explained with joy that it was his first European Cup goal for Austria after 17 games. A reason to celebrate, but the home team wasn't just happy with the goal in the first half: they missed numerous other chances and hit the woodwork three times. Fischer and Fitz couldn't help but be self-critical and criticize the poor evaluation of opportunities.

Optimism despite the need to catch up

Coach Helm left no doubt that the team had to pull its weight when it came to exploiting opportunities in order to be successful in the next round. “There needs to be more efficiency,” says Helm. Nevertheless, he remains optimistic and is already looking ahead to the challenges ahead. In the 90th minute, Fitz made the final decision when he converted a penalty to make it 2-0. Helm was relieved about the second goal, which now provides a comfortable basis for the second leg in Georgia.

After the final whistle, the audience in the stadium could be proud of the team's performance. Although Austria went into the game as favorites - after all, FC Spaeri, as a second division team from Tbilisi, did not have the same name as the Viennese team - the first match of the European Cup season was anything but a walk in the park. Fischer appealed to the team to stay focused in the second leg and to maximize their performance in order to secure promotion to the European Cup.

It is an important step for the team to, in the best case scenario, improve on their third place from the previous season (which they took). Now it's time to carry the momentum from the victory into the second leg and show that Wiener Austria is pursuing big goals this season. Who knows, maybe the big goal of qualifying for the European Cup will be on the agenda in the end.