22-0
Amateurs insist they didn’t give up despite Everton humiliation
YOU may have seen the viral footage of Everton’s 19th goal during their farcical 22-0 friendly victory in Austria on Saturday. Oumar Niasse won possession on the touchline and found Nikola Vlasic on his own inside ATV Irdning’s penalty area, with no defender within 10 yards of him. Irdning’s reserve goalkeeper, Wolfgang Zelzer, turned away and Vlasic sidefooted the ball past him. It looked like the part-time hosts, who struggled in Austria’s fifth tier last season, simply threw in the towel. But their captain Hannes Wallner fought back yesterday, saying: ‘Well no, that goal was unlucky. The linesman wanted to flag for offside and the referee saw something else and let the play go on. So then he scores. Wolfgang thought it was offside — that was the reason.’ Replays show Vlasic was clearly onside. Wallner added: ‘We didn’t give up. We just don’t have the quality to run for 90 minutes at such tempo and speed like Everton. It looks like we gave up but this isn’t so. They are faster, stronger and better than us at everything.’ So why was Marco Silva’s first game in charge of Everton played against a team packed with car salesmen, students and bartenders in front of only 300 supporters? Everton went there for the facilities. Silva made use of the high-altitude setting in central Austria for a full week, training at the Ennsfield Road complex and staying in the renowned five-star Schloss Pichlarn — just as Fabio Capello’s England did ahead of the disastrous 2010 World Cup. Capello also headed there with Real Madrid, conceding twice during a 10-2 win with Iker Casillas in goal, while Roma have also played a friendly against the minnows. Dortmund, Schalke and Stoke have also sampled the quaint town for training camps. Wallner — who works in sales for cement manufacturer Weber Saint-Gobain — added: ‘Irdning is 700 metres above sea level, so the conditions are very good for fitness training. We knew that Everton would win this game by a lot.’