IN THE grand scheme of things, back-to-back draws aren’t much of a reality check. But on the way to their latest stalemate, Austria Salzburg’s supporters took in the village of Fuschl am See, where lies the corporate nerve centre of a company which, in 1984, adapted a Thai stimulant of which they now sell more than 3 billion cans a year worldwide. In 2005, the same firm bought their ailing football club and placed it in the ranks of other heavily-branded non-entities bearing their drink’s name and colours.

Those who chose to support 11 of Red Bull GmbH’s 4,000 employees have discovered that habitually topping Austria’s Bundesliga is scant consolation for routinely failing to secure salient European exposure for their brand. Those who didn’t have found the path from the country’s basement league, unlike the winding road to Fuschl am See, to be straight and true.

This season, however, the real Austria Salzburg are experiencing some resistance to their progress, with recent draws at Grünau and Strobl and an uncharacteristic away defeat at Bürmoos. Nevertheless, with just Saturday’s home date with as-yet winless St Georgen to go before the winter break, they’re tucked neatly behind Kuchl in second place and alle ist gut.

Since the Austrian fizz magnates unfurled their template in New York with the fanfare ‘We’ve changed the name, now we’re changing the game’, they’ve learned that, just as in Salzburg, old habits die hard and the team formerly known as MetroStars are still the league’s longest-running joke.

When two of their players were recently suspended for doping, one of the deputising soft drink adverts, rookie goalkeeper Danny Cepero, scored an 80-yard free kick on Giants Stadium’s hallucinogenic pitch and football entered new realms of synthesis.

But how ‘real’ is football anyway? If a recent spate of accounts are anything to go by, Eastern ingenuity distorts the game in more than just Salzburg and New York.

In his book, ‘The Fix’, Canadian journalist Declan Hill tells of meetings with Chinese-Malaysian fixers at the 2006 World Cup, focusing on Ghana’s 3-0 loss to Brazil and, hilariously, the failure to fix England’s game with Ecuador because Sven Goran Eriksson’s side weren’t considered good enough to score twice.

More recently, a Spanish judge’s taped Russian boasts that Zenit St Petersburg’s UEFA Cup semi final second leg defeat of Bayern Munich was bought, as well as suggestions that the final – in Manchester, against Rangers – was also compromised, preceded suspicious half time Asian betting patterns on a Championship match at Carrow Road in which Derby goalkeeper Roy Carroll was dismissed and subsequently dropped.

The rise of in-running betting has not only lead to the presence of ‘spotters’ in UK grounds exploiting the momentary gap in TV transmission to China by informing syndicates of what’s unfolding by mobile phone, but also the violent Newcastle murder of a Chinese couple known to be recruiting others to beat the Asian bookies.

The object of such obvious market appeal would have to be pretty robust to withstand the temptations money can bring, and we know how flaky the Premier League can be. If it didn’t come over all light-headed around the folding stuff, ‘Grand Slam Sunday’ would be a once in a lifetime event instead of occurring twice a season, West Ham would’ve been relegated for Carlos Tevez’s illegal registration and the likes of Thaksin Shinawatra and Arcadi Gaydamak wouldn’t be allowed to hold stakes in its precious member clubs.

Seeing Garry Cook’s ‘Virgin of Asia’ became the latest side to benefit from Rob Styles’ over-assertive manner in the box, made me wonder what effect the boom in the Premier League’s overseas finance, aided by lax application of the fabled ‘Fit & Proper Persons Test’ and other excuses for governance from Richard Scudamore, has on its integrity.

Was the Professional Match Game Officials Board unprecedented last-minute wholesale changes to so-called ‘Select Group’ appointments recently an indication that whatever familiarity breeds, it ain’t good? And what’s happened to Mark Clattenburg, suspended days before the season fresh from having an expensive-looking hair weave?

Is it really appropriate that in Sky, the Premier League has paymaster, broadcaster and bookkeeper? How can they talk about the global appeal of the Premier League when there’s empty seats when its teams go on tour? Is the real reason that Game 39′s still on the agenda to tap into massive overseas gambling markets, extending Scudamore’s working relationship with those he really ought to be protecting the game from?

Don’t have nightmares, do sleep well.

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HAD Albert Camus been around today, it’s safe to say his life would have taken a very different path. Tuberculosis wouldn’t have put an end to his goalkeeping career, meaning his best-known novel, L’Étranger, would probably have explored the difficulties of adjusting to life after a big money move abroad. Almost certainly, it would have been the wreckage of his luxury motor, and not his publisher’s, from which their bodies would eventually be pulled.

Instead, amongst the many things he leaves behind is as succinct an expression of what makes football tick – real football, not what the likes of Garry Cook and Richard Scudamore talk about – as you’ll find: “All I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football”

To lovers of a game now so pervasive that to follow it – to watch, to consume, even to accept it – requires faith bordering on nihilism, Camus’ expressions of life’s absurdities are a breath of fresh air.

He was big on co-operation, solidarity and effort, was our Albert. He advocated persevering in the face of pain, sticking up for your mates and what you believe in, even if to say so’s fucking boring and there’s no point.

To followers of three-times league champions Austria Salzburg, when the morality of their club was compromised by a hostile takeover from Red Bull, their obligations were obvious. Offered no choice but to go it alone to preserve their club’s name and colours, they embody Camus’ assertion that in life, the pursuit of meaning is the meaning.

Back-to-back promotions mean that those who, almost 15 years ago, wore their violet and white colours to a two-legged UEFA Cup Final against Inter Milan, now don them with comparable pride in Austria’s fifth division, the 2. Landesliga.

Just three weeks after celebrating their latest title with a Spanish holiday, coach Miro Bojceski’s new-look line up opened the season in front of the most magnificent support in non-league football with their first draw in almost two years.

Not the anticipated start, but the recruits quickly gelled; Bosnia-Herzegovinian forward Mersudin Jukic scoring the first in a four-goal win at St Georgen, then setting up each goal in the 5-1 defeat of Golling.

Last season’s top-scorer Mario Schleindl then chipped in with a hat-trick in a 7-1 rout of Plainfeld before Jukic got back in on the act. He scored in consecutive 3-1 wins, over Thalgau and Berndorf, before grabbing four in the 5-1 away drubbing of Oberhofen which saw Austria Salzburg share top spot with Kuchl, who were the next visitors to Maxglan.

1,600 turned up for the top-of-the-table clash and to celebrate Austria Salzburg’s 75th birthday in the only way they know. Fittingly, it was another birthday boy, Nico Meyer, who pierced the tension with both strikes in a 2-0 win which earmarked Kuchl as the biggest threat to violet dominance.

So, eight games in and three points clear, the script of Austria Salzburg’s ascent at the first time of asking looks, this time, like it might take us to the final curtain. But this is football – real football – not theatre. When pushed on which he preferred, Albert Camus spoke for us all when he replied: ‘Football, without hesitation.’

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AS ANTICIPATED, both Euro 2008 hosts got underway with defeats, although only one looked out of its depth – and it wasn’t Austria. Written off in most quarters as the tournament’s ‘punchbag’, the onus was on them to come out fighting on Sunday, and what a scrap it was.

Stunned into life by a fourth-minute sucker blow from the penalty spot, Austria went the distance against Croatia, all for nothing but the knowledge that they must follow knocking out Poland on Thursday with something miraculous against the Germans next week.

Salzburg takes centre stage today, as the competition rolls into the city for the first of its three matches featuring defending champions Greece. Don’t be fooled by the broadness of UEFA’s brushstrokes, FC Salzburg’s Stadion Wals-Siezenheim is none other than Red Bull’s glimmering monument to the paradoxes of corporate football, the Bullen-Arena. €60m down the line and still only the second best side in Austria, they supply as many players to the national squad as they do to rival nations, including Croatian captain Niko Kovač.

Meanwhile, in nearby Maxglan last weekend, Austria Salzburg’s kultverein bade farewell to sixth division football with victory over Elixhausen before a Meisterfeier drew another near-perfect season to a close. With the final word on the club’s 75th term which ended, fittingly, three points shy of the available 78, here’s the unique perspective of lifelong Leeds United fan and Austria Salzburg’s English-language website fangler-in-chief.

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IT’S NOT that long since the regular reader of this thread will have raised an incredulous eyebrow at a situation in the Austrian Bundesliga which saw final league positions decided in court.

Two clubs, Sturm Graz and Grazer AK from Austria’s second city, unsuccessfully contested the deduction of a combined total of 41 points on grounds of, amongst other things, insolvency. Today, the glare will be reciprocated twelve-fold by Austria’s vast legions of Leeds United fans, just 360 days after we ourselves filed for administration.

Let’s allay, right now, any fears that the Austrian game faced meltdown. I’ve checked, and it’s still there – but its most decorated boss isn’t. Going from Trapattoni to pony and trap, Giovanni packed his bags for Dublin after a 3-2 win for Bauwelt Koch (selling building and, erm, cooking) Mattersburg over Red Bull (vodka mixer for puffs) Salzburg handed Rapid (washing powder, probably – oh, hang on a minute, that actually is their name) Vienna the title and a crack at next season’s Champions League.

To alleged heart-attack in a can magnate Dieter Mateschitz, it’s the most coveted shelf space in the whole shop, and much like love, money can’t buy it for his side.

But if this week’s proved anything, it’s that Austria’s basements are where all the action is. Should Austria Salzburg follow tonight’s anticipated win at Taxham with another against Obertrum on Saturday, they may have just enough daylight to secure back-to-back promotions on home turf with a handful of games to spare.

Bracketing 4-0 wins over Union Hallein and Abersee with a ruthless 7-1 demolition job at Abtenau under new boss Gerhard Stöger (seen above sending his team to face supporters after only putting two past whipping boys Lamprechtshausen), the country’s fifth tier beckons for the club which snubbed Mateschitz’s millions.

With a run of impressive higher-league scalps also under their belts, they find themselves in the semi-finals of a regional cup competition which, should they clinch it, would put them into the hat for next season’s Austrian FA Cup 1st round proper. What price a premature Salzburg derby in the house that pop built?

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THERE’S an episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer accidentally gets a job whilst merely passing through an office block. Unqualified for the position, he’s promptly fired after a couple of days even though he never really worked there in the first place.

It’s easily done. I didn’t go to New York seeking employment, but sometimes an opportunity arises which is just too good to miss. ”Most jobs take energy,” the ad said. “This one gives it! We have an exciting opportunity to join Red Bull New York as a Marketing Manager.” Now, I didn’t need to read any further. I knew I was the enthusiastic and goal-orientated person they were looking for. I’m committed to the sports industry, and it’s true – I’m deeply concerned about the growth of New York Red Bulls.

I found myself standing in a cheap suit in front Red Bull New York’s top brass before you could say Einstürzende Neubauten and, to my surprise, they set me on and I got to work. During my very first morning, I spent a whole year’s advertising budget on a piece of shit hoarding featuring striker Jozy Altidore kicking a red bull right up the arse (above).

It was well into the afternoon, around the time I was changing the club’s official anthem from The Rapture’s ‘Whoo! Alright, Yeah… Uh Huh’ to Edelweiss’ ‘Bring Me Edelweiss’, when they realised their mistake and hauled me over the coals. There was just enough time before I had to clear my desk of cracker crumbs to do a big shit in a plant pot and sign off a photoshoot of Juan Pablo Angel missing a bull’s arse with a banjo.

It’s just my rotten luck, as well, that another Red Bull opening has been filled: in May, the Salzburg job will be taken by ex-AZ Alkmaar miracle-worker, Co Adriaanse. Never liked him anyway. With one mad eye on shortly joining Ireland, Giovanni Trapattoni used the other one to watch a matadorial Rapid Vienna strike five deadly first-half blows upon his charges, before mercilessly twisting the blade twice in the second.

“It was not a defeat, it was a catastrophe,” Trapattoni said. ‘DEAD BULL!’ exclaimed the Austrian press, and it scarcely mattered to Austria Salzburg that their spring season opener at Taxham fell to wintry weather, because they were too busy guffawing to notice. In fact, they still haven’t stopped.

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As a sideswipe at the phoniness of fame and fortune, The Catcher in the Rye is so persuasive that its author, J. D. Salinger, hasn’t left the house since writing it in 1951, and Mark David Chapman shot John Lennon dead on its perceived say-so 30 years later.

But just because you enjoy the infectious cynicism of protagonist Holden Caulfield, doesn’t mean that you, too, will end up trembling in a Manhattan side street clutching an autograph book and a concealed weapon. No, you can cheerily share his concerns, such as where do Central Park’s ducks go during winter, without giving a damn about what happens to the rest of New York city’s wildlife. But I’ll tell you anyway.

The Red Bulls are on a pre-season team-building break with their Salzburg equivalent, where they probably spend their days rehearsing some crumby rap or other about what fun it is to work for an energy drink, and, with bladders brimming with the stuff, their evenings locked in lousy dormitories crying themselves to half an hour’s sleep on saturated mattresses.

Only joking. They’re just familiarising themselves with the surroundings, for not only do Red Bulls New York and Salzburg share a badge and colours, they will, from 2009, share grounds. Despite lying in different continents, you’ll be forgiven for thinking that their ersatz homes – Red Bull Park and the Bullen Arena – are one and the same; on television at least, which, for a global brand, is all that really matters. I mean, look at New York training in Salzburg (above) – or is it the other way round?

While David Beckham prepares once more to flog Major League Soccer to prime-time TV audiences, the league’s salary cap bypass for individuals of merit – the ‘Beckham exception’ – is snaring little else of note. Well, unless you count Juan Pablo Angel, that is. And that Mexican bloke that kept jumping the ball past awestruck defenders three World Cups ago.

It’s true that the face of MLS is being transformed, but it’s largely thanks to the league’s relaxed approach to sponsorship. Introduced to welcome a pair of charging bulls to New York’s jerseys, it will enable half the clubs to kick off this season advertising the usual shit, leaving the rest with a few phone calls to make. In a sportscape where the club is king, branded shirts are most un-American to the fan’s eye. Unless, of course, they’re unfortunate enough to support a club that is the sponsor, and vice versa.

Anyway, there’s a corner of the world where such lily-livers are frowned upon, where Coca-Cola is mixed with red wine because it alone doesn’t get you pissed, and not even an alpine winter stands in the way of what really matters.

Indoor football bridges the gap between autumn and spring in Austria, and it was Austria Salzburg’s pleasure to accept an invitation to get right in the faces of some of Bundesliga’s professional billboards on live TV at Salzburg Arena’s Hallencup.

Okay, so the side which heads the sixth division lost all their matches on the squeaky stuff, but that’s hardly the point. 1,500 violetten raised the roof for tussles with the likes of Cashpoint Altach and Josko Reid (boldly representing the worlds of betting and double glazing, respectively) while only a few hundred witnessed Altach’s loss to Linz in the final. ‘Goosebumps,’ proclaimed the press of Austria Salzburg’s good, old-fashioned ultraism, ‘enthusiasm one would wish for at every football ground.’

In the tournament’s afterglow, the overseer of Austria Salzburg’s re-emergence, Moritz Grobovschek, stepped down and a swift ballot ushered in Gernot Blaikner. A local businessman who worked with the club shortly before Red Bull’s takeover, it is hoped that their admirable principles retain their lustre and that, just like the ducks in Central Park, they eventually prove that some absences are only temporary.

Austria Salzburg’s brand new English language official site is here.

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Who’d have thought Steve Staunton would find work long before the FAI got round to replacing him? Giovanni Trapattoni’s installation as the latest favourite for the vacant Ireland job gives us a quick opportunity to review his finest moment as coach of Red Bull Salzburg.

Clearly a man who doesn’t ‘do’ irony (the wife probably takes care of that sort of thing), the Italian dismisses suggestions that his players – owned lock, stock and barrel by an energy drinks firm – lack fitness in broken, yet blistering, German. A quick précis:

‘Our training is strong. Is modern. Training wins also. I have 21 trophies. There is blah, blah, blah from you. Fools write who know nothing. Blah, blah, blah, blah. I can understand people paying. No problema. Let whistle. Is right. Have lost. But run 90 minutes! I am a professional in psychology. We train, make fitness. You people always make qua, qua, qua. Shit fools!’

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It’s official, folks: Red Bull kills. Just one sip and that’s it, your sorry arse is going straight to hell. Actually, that’s not true: you’ll need a bit more than that. Anyway, for the sake of New Yorkers, the Detriot medics who this week warned that quaffing two cans of a ‘popular energy drink’ a day may mortally increase blood pressure really ought to pack their stethoscopes and head for the Big Apple.

You see, some months before the self-crowned ‘King of Beers’ tickled European sensibilities with their funny-the-first-time fantasy of ‘Soccertainment!’, Red Bull landed in the States clutching a blueprint for its reality.

At its heart lay Red Bull Park, the ‘Soccer and Entertainment Center’ and sometime home of New York’s MLS franchise. Thrilled by the proposed facility, a few thousand locals bought into Red Bull’s vision and dared to envisage the luminaries which would, one day, mostly keep its home bench warm.

Luis Figo’s and Ronaldo’s names went tantalisingly undenied by the club’s PR machine which recently blew a gasket when Thierry Henry spoke to the local rag. “I always say that one day I can play over there,” he said. “For me, New York is the best city in the world.”

Wow. So, how’s work on Red Bull Park coming along? Thanks to the intercontinental mass of pipes and valves they call the interweb, football and shopping’s latest cathedral reaches for the heavens right before our very eyes. Hmm. Better get a move on, boys! Henry’s only got so much va-va-voom left in the tank.

The failure of Red Bull and David Beckham to secure success for their playthings this season resulted, naturally, in the chop for their coaches. In a move contrary to the ‘laid-back sincerity’ of company head Dieter Mateschitz’s ‘brand philosophy’ – whatever that is – jumped-up middle-management decided ex-US national boss Bruce Arena’s objectives – whatever they were – haven’t been achieved.

While LA Galaxy sought to swiftly replace Frank Yallop with somebody Beckham’s heard of (namely, Ruud Gullit) the fall-out from Arena’s exit featured tales of a New York dressing room mutiny led by that pair of renowned shit-kickers, John Harkes and Claudio Reyna.

There’s no such disquiet by a Salzburg airfield; discounting the nearby roar of jet engines and the screech of rubber on tarmac, that is. As Red Bull’s other bastard offspring staggers dazed and confused around Bundesliga no-man’s land, the real Austria Salzburg ended their sixth-division term against HSV Wals just as impressively as they started it, with five unanswered goals.

Herbstmeisters once again, beating second-placed Obertrum to the four-month hibernation period by six points, the club posed for a family snap in a supreme show of just how far they’ve progressed in the space of these pages.

Who needs Detroit quacks? It’s quite simple. Lay off the taurine, live long and prosper.

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As the familiar air of helpless dismay causes Britain’s talk radio station switchboards to short circuit, fans further afield are saying ‘enough is enough’ slightly more proactively.

Forsaken the need to qualify for a tournament they have never before graced, Austria’s national team have not so much been warming up, as melting down. Without a win this year, a section of embarrassed fans have called for the side’s withdrawal from Euro 2008.

The ‘Österreich zeigt rückgrat!’ (Austria, show some backbone!) campaign foresees a competition enriched by the absence of a side who, just this month, lost meekly to the clockmaking bankers next door.

In America, swimming similarly against the tide are The Sons of Ben, dedicated followers of a football club which doesn’t exist. Adopting a ‘build it and they will come’ outlook, the Philadelphians are trying to persuade Major League Soccer bigwigs to conjure up a brand new team in the city.

As if to prove that the lack of a side of their own is no obstacle to healthy rivalry, they recently took themselves to New York to give their unattached colours an airing and, more understandably, bad-mouth the locals.

In a corner of East Rutherford, the concrete shithole they call home, Red Bull have spent this season bringing a whole new meaning to the term ‘average attendance’. Despite reaching the climactic play-offs beloved of American sport, soccer crowds at Giants Stadium have been so underwhelming, its 80,000 capacity will next season be capped at just 15,000.

By comparison, tomorrow’s opponents – play-off hopefuls LA Galaxy – often see extensive queues outside their 27,000-seat Home Depot Center, although many of those probably turn up mistakenly anticipating a decent deal on shelving units.

As if those figures aren’t enough to turn Red Bull green with envy, when LA brought David Beckham to town it attracted what Jim Bowen might have called a ‘here’s what you could’ve won’ gate of over 66,000.

It would be appropriate if he had, because Beckham – like Bully’s Star Prize – has otherwise been about as much use to LA as a speedboat in a council flat.

Neither of the regular readers of these pages will require introduction to Austria Salzburg’s have-a-go heroes, and will be delighted to learn that the side will head the country’s sixth division into the winter break with a game to spare.

A hard-earned victory at former leaders Obertrum preceded three, four, and five-goal drubbings of Hof, Liefering, and Salzburg – who not only share a city with our violet friends, but play on an old stomping ground of theirs.

Ever the innovators, themed fan events have lately seen a Bavarian-style Oktoberfest and a Mexican chill-eating contest stretch Austria Salzburg’s two portaloos to the limits of their capabilities.

A proposed English football theme day will shortly do likewise, as the club’s ownership is taken from fans and placed into a range of anonymous offshore trusts, just for the sheer hell of it.

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Hot on the heels of a computer security breach at the Pentagon, another influential institution has suffered at the clammy fingers of determined hackers. Austria Salzburg’s online forum has been prised open and each thread wiped clean, along with every single member’s account; erasing anecdotal evidence charting the true cost to fans of football’s insincere cash injections.

Was it pranksters, or the work of a ruthless taskforce fearful that the ongoing violet revolution was edging European football followers to think in ways subversive to the norm? Perhaps it was just those bloody kids who burned down their Nonntal ground last December.

Redevelopment work meant Austria Salzburg sought a third home since Red Bull’s hostile takeover of the club and its colours compelled a thousand fans to go it alone. Ironically, the most accommodating patch lay to the west of the city, close to Hangar 7, the luxurious site of Red Bull kingpin Dieter Mateschitz’s private aircraft and F1 car collection.

Contemptuous of the local ostentation, Austria Salzburg settled quickly into the neighbourhood, dishing out a staple diet of goals and beer to an appreciative clientele. Winning margins were familiarly large until their fellow promotion contenders began to offer stiff resistance.

Bergheim and Abersee were defeated by solitary strikes before Union Hallein halted their progress with a last-minute 1-0 victory which required local police to disperse Austria Salzburg’s boisterous travelling support, and prompted the club to task the guilty parties with cleaning toilets and collecting rubbish on home ground.

Current form of six victories and a defeat is matched only by Obertrum, who top the table on goal difference and host the newly-promoted violets in Saturday’s topspiel der woche.

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