How an Austrian Amateur Club Got Me into Football – and Then Didn’t Anymore
"Anyway, that’s how it was: Sundays, 11am, while others still smelled of incense or altar wine, I blasted loud honking salvos for every ball win in Austria’s largest market town."
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Anyone who reads along here regularly knows that football actually has nothing to do with sport. But with longing, as cheesy as leather carriages in a Hollywood western: love, shaky alliances, pub regulars’ dramas.
And yes, by the time you get to the Champions League, football becomes a glossy saga. Haaland wears Beats by Dre, Mbappé ties luxury ties. Lamal has an OnlyFans problem. Everything massive, nothing tangible. And so very different from my short, hot love for FC Lustenau 1907.
There’s a quick flashback, we rewind 20 years. Starting with the 2005 season, my father took me almost every weekend to the matches in the Regionalliga West, or: the third tier of Austrian football. The club had just been relegated, they were playing amateur football again. It smelled of burnt sausage and marquee festivals.
Maybe one of the reasons why my father, a true Lustenau native, who grew up two streets from the stadium, suddenly wanted to return.
At first I was lost in this village that wasn’t mine, but thanks to this football club was suddenly supposed to become mine. I stood at the edge of the pitch and knew no one. With an air horn (no idea, really!) I helped make sure that changed quickly, because: this €4.99 investment got me attention powerful enough to sabotage any U2 concert.
Anyway, that’s how it was: Sundays, 11am, while others still smelled of incense or altar wine, I blasted loud honking salvos for every ball win in Austria’s largest market town.
And yes, it sounded like a bad Scooter remix, but: my twelve-year-old self loved Scooter!
Also, the so-called stadium. An der Holzstraße. What a name, so much tradition. Right in the centre of town, framed by detached houses, into whose gardens the balls would land whenever a cross went wild or a fumbled penalty vanished into the mid-morning sky; so there it was, this imagined backdrop of wooden slats, grass, and a scaffold stand, where everyone knew each other – or at least pretended to.
I don’t remember the first match. I think we won. But I got to know FC Lustenau in the season they achieved promotion unbeaten. 27 wins, just three draws. By the final match, a home game, I was already a die-hard fan who had traded the horn for a fan scarf (even though no one admitted it: to everyone’s relief).
Six to two. Three goals from the wonderful Brazilian. That’s how the season ended. After the final whistle, everyone jumped onto the pitch. Someone handed me a blue promotion shirt. “Löwenstark” was written on it, underneath the lion, the club’s crest. Of course, everyone had to sign it. Diego, Sidinei, the coach, even the physio. And yes, that shirt still hangs somewhere today, faded, but back then not even an iPod, not a GameBoy, not even the Crazy Frog could compete.
In summer 2006 I fell asleep during extra time of the Germany vs Italy semi-final. At a football camp I was nicknamed “Gurki” because people kept nutmegging me. And I went with my dad to every pre-season match of FC Lustenau 1907.
Soon it would be time: second division. Reichshofstadion. Friday night, floodlights, half empty. But for me: Anfield. Bernabéu. Wembley. At half-time, reality: the same burnt sausage as half a kilometre further back in the past. Plus cheap lemonade that smelled of sugar shock and dentist. For me: a whole life.
So there we stood, my father and I. Enclosed in a world where everyone knew each other. Players, board members, announcers, warm-up singers, fans – no distance and no multimillion sponsors. Just us and these people pretending this was professional football routine, when really the clubhouse mattered more than any training camp.
The best thing about promotion were the derbies against Austria Lustenau. The other local club. The rich ones. The bad guys. The club whose stadium had to be used, because the old Holzstraße had neither the space nor the league standard. Anyway, Austria: hate, pure hate. And: my first taste of real rivalry. Like Blur vs Oasis. Like Britney vs Christina. Like NSYNC vs Backstreet Boys. You loved your own club and hated the others. Also because FC usually lost.
Only once did they win against Austria. Years later, 2008. In freezer-cold November. Almost 5,000 people were there and saw how Marquinhos let fly from 25 metres in the 68th minute. The ball flew in a cucumber bend that wasn’t EU-compliant, first towards the stadium roof, then towards me. And yet somehow landed in the top right corner.
For me that was Istanbul 2005, Zidane volley 2002, Agüero in stoppage time. Just at Reichshofstadion. Just a derby win! But for me: world football in Lustenau.
I never counted, but it must have been a few hundred matches my father and I watched over the years – from the touchline, at Holzstraße, at Reichshofstadion, on random fields abroad (well, not in Lustenau). And after every match we’d drive back to Feldkirch, my town. Where I was born, where I went to school. Where I did what teenage kids do.
I remember that feeling after those matches. The drive home. The radio in the car. Second division results. Adi Niederkorn reporting from Grödig, Leoben, Schwanenstadt. Clubs that sounded like German indie bands on 2007 tour posters. I didn’t care about the table. It wasn’t about points. It was about atmosphere. That feeling of having been there.
And then it stopped. Just like that. I don’t know when. At some point I just didn’t go anymore. Other things became more important. Music, friends, alcohol didn’t really fit with Friday night football in a strange village. So FC Lustenau disappeared from my life like a favourite band you suddenly don’t want to hear anymore because they’re now playing at the Bundesvision Song Contest.
But sometimes I think about it – the first matches and the last. And those few years, they still burn. Like a Bravo Hits CD you don’t own anymore, but still know the tracklist by heart. “Everytime We Touch” by Cascada, “Push the Button” by Sugababes, and a long-range shot from 25 metres. My soundtrack, a mixtape.
Christoph Benkeser is an amazing Austrian journalist.
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Wonderful piece. Long life to local clubs and routines.