Soccer Scene in Austria

The Austrian Football Federation is the sports association with the most members in Austria. It comprises 2,317 clubs with 387,300 active players. The top league is the “Federal League”,which consists of the 1st and 2nd Divisions. Ten clubs are admitted to each Division, with the best-known clubs internationally being Sturm Graz, Rapid Wien and Austrian Wien.

Among the biggest successes scored by the Austrian national football team since 1945 are that of gaining third place in the 1954 World Cup and reaching the concluding rounds of the 1978, 1982, 1990 and 1998 world championships.

Apart from football, there are a number of other sporting disciplines in which Austrians have come to the fore in international competitions. These include judo (Peter Seisenbacher was an Olympic medallist in 1984 and 1988), handball, canoeing, rowing, shooting, tennis (Thomas Muster ranked No. 1 in the World), sailing, table tennis (Werner Schlager and Karl Jindrak are world-class players) and show-jumping (Hugo Simon won the World Cup in 1979, 1996 and 1997).