Time for the championship group!

FC Red Bull Salzburg

·1 April 2023

Time for the championship group!

Kick off in Klagenfurt

Having returned from the international break, our boys are travelling to the south of Austria to start their championship group with a clash against sixth-placed SK Austria Klagenfurt. Kick-off is at 14:30 CET on Sunday 2 April.

We are 10 matches away from securing our tenth consecutive Austrian title. It will be far from a walk in the park - we are just three points ahead of Sturm Graz, so any slip-up could prove fatal. There will be no easy opponents either as the top five in the country face off in the coming weeks!

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Having earned promotion in summer 2021, Austria Klagenfurt are in the championship group for the second consecutive season. Their last two Bundesliga home matches were wins and clean sheets for coach Peter Pacult (3-0 v Altach and 1-0 v Hartberg). The Klagenfurt coach will have to watch from the stands against us though, due to suspension, with his assistant Martin Lassnig taking charge from the sidelines instead.

He is not the only absentee for Austria: with Simon Straudi (injured), Thorsten Mahrer, Andy Irving and Florian Rieder (all suspended), Klagenfurt are without four regulars for the clash. Their hopes will rest even more than usual on top scorer Markus Pink as a result. The 32-year-old is the lead marksman in the ADMIRAL Bundesliga currently with 16 goals.

We have shown we have what it takes to counter their goal threat, however. Philipp Köhn has kept clean sheets in the past two clashes with Klagenfurt, and we would like to keep this trend going as we open our championship group campaign on Sunday. All the information for those travelling to support us away can be found HERE. Anyone who doesn't want to be there in person can follow the game on Sky Sport Austria or via live updates on our website from anywhere in the world.

My RBS prediction game

During the championship and qualification group you can also enter your predictions for the latest ADMIRAL Bundesliga match day in My RBS prediction game, with great prizes awaiting the top three points scorers every week! You can register and play for free at any time, if you haven't done so yet. Great prizes await those winning the most points on every matchday.

to the prediction game

Injury news

Fernando (back), Daouda Guindo (knee), Justin Omoregie (back) and Luka Sucic (knee) are out.
Noah Okafor (foot) is a doubt.
Samson Tijani tweaked an old shoulder injury in recovery training and requires an operation.

Views

The business end of the season is starting, and we are looking forward to it so much. I said before the season that we won't win the league automatically. That is being shown to be true now. We had a really good regular season and won just as many points as we did last year, but the competition is very strong.

Matthias Jaissle

We are starting an exciting championship group on Sunday. We want to concentrate on ourselves, first and foremost, and perform to our ability on the pitch. We want that to be the case right from the start in Klagenfurt, and we are determined to take three points. We know though that it will not be easy. We saw that in our last game against Klagenfurt, which was a hard-fought 1-0 win.

Strahinja Pavlovic