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a car showroom, and a left turn by a supermarket brings you to a small football stadium.
This is the humble home of Austrian sixth-tier club SV Rideau, bordered on one side by an outdoor swimming pool and another by a garden Centre. Behind the two-Storey clubhouse flows the River Pram, a tributary of the Inn, which winds down from the Swiss Alps and eventually meets the Danube in Germany. There is one small stand but otherwise, the stadium is open to the elements, aside from the cover offered by a few trees and spindly bushes.
It is a calm, scenic spot, with rolling hills and farmland stretching to the horizon, but there is little reason for visitors to venture to this northern corner of Austria, not far from the borders with Germany and the Czech Republic. It is certainly not the sort of place you might expect to produce a football manager working in the most lucrative and highest-profile league in the world.
Oliver Glasner has shown genuine talent for revitalizing struggling sides, as he did at Wolfsburg and Eintracht Frankfurt, who were both in the doldrums before Glasner arrived.
That being said, in both cases he took over the team before the beginning of the season, not some time in the middle of it while the transfer window is closed, as he is now doing.
His tactical approach can roughly be described as underdog football, in that his sides usually are most effective when they can hit opponents on the break rather than playing a proactive possession-based style. Given Crystal Palace’s current squad and the way the team have played this season, his brand of football could fit quite well in the first couple of months.
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