Sport and Politics Can Mix: Austria's M.Sindelar
How the Wunderteam's Star Player Represented Resistance to the Nazis
Throughout football's relatively short history there have been a number of great individuals and teams; Pele, the Brazil team of 1970; Pozzo's organised and illustrious back-to-back World Cup winning Italian side; Maradona; Zidane and France in 1998; and Hugo Meisl's Wunderteam, the team that has come to represent the peak of central Europe's Danubian school.
Austria's 'Wunderteam'
Of that team, it was Matthias Sindelar who shone, used by Meisl as an artistic and thoughtful centre-forward who broke the mould and acted for perhaps the first time as a successful extension football's most traditional goal scoring role; the playmaker and lynch-pin of the Wunderteam, play flowed through him, and he became the darling of Austrian football, not to mention the more considered and thoughtful passing game that distinguished central Europe from Britain, the island which had first given it football.
Austria failed to win the World Cup, despite the vast admiration and success they garnered in other tournaments, though they came close in 1934, losing to eventual winners Italy in the Semi-finals. Meisl's team, though - and Sindelar in particular - were heralded as greats, advocators of the artistic, skilful and romantic style of play that had come to prominence and favour with football fans throughout the nation.
Political Football: Sindelar's Refusal to Play for Germany
Undoubtedly one of the greats of early world football, Sindelar's international successes were short; Austria qualified for the 1938 World Cup, but Hitler's Anschluss meant that Austria were withdrawn from the championships and merged with the German team.
Sindelar refused to play for the German national team, opposing the annexation of Austria and the loss of his nation's independence. He made his feelings known on the pitch when - in a match that officiated the merging of the nation's two national sides - Sindelar scored the opening goal of a victory that the 'Ostmark XI' dominated, with Sindelar spearheading the team has he had so brilliantly throughout the 1930s. The 'reconciliation game', as it was called, marked the centre-forward's last performance in the international arena.
Matthias Sindelar as the Symbol of Intellectual Football
Figurehead as he was for Austria's Wunderteam, Sindelar's style - letting head rule over heart, playing intelligently instead of physically - led to his appropriation by the Austrian middle-classes, and his withdrawal from the international scene strengthened his iconic status; it was seen that Sindelar, the symbol of Meisl's Austria, was in turn a representation of all that Austria had stood for as an independent nation, and his sporting attributes become associated with the 'old' Austria; artistry, intellectualism, beauty and meditation.
His refusal to play in a German side that was more physical than its historical Austrian counterpart confirmed the intellectual validity of the Wunderteam style and expounded the view that a nation's sporting style was invariably tied to its national character. As such, Sindelar became a sporting symbol of resistance, with memories of his final flourish coming from the 'reconciliation match' when his team's second goal was matched by Sindelar's jubilant celebration in front of the executive box holding Nazi officials.
The Mythical Death of Austria's Superman
Having made no secret of his preference for an independent Austria - though hardly advocating dissidence - Sindelar was found dead on 19th January 1939. His girlfriend, who lay next to him, died later in hospital, and it was pronounced that both died from a gas leak that had affected the apartment.
Though it appears that Sindelar was probably the victim of a genuine heater malfunction, a number of Austrians accused the Nazi government of murder by poisoning, and still more suggested that, cut off from the Wunderteam and from the old Austria that he loved, he committed suicide.
Even in death, then, Matthias Sindelar was a symbol of Austria's former sporting and intellectual greatness, and a symbol for the necessary link between sport and politics
Politics and Football Combined: Austria's Sindelar
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