The secret history of Liverpool's Europa League debut opponents LASK Linz

The story of Darwin Núñez's Europa League opponents LASK: a club with an absconding president, a relegation to the Third Division and a resurgence. The Austrian side have had a history of misfortune and debt, and now host the Uruguayan's club. LASK is the opponent that will host Darwin Núñez with Liverpool in Austria on Thursday in the first matchday of the Europa League group stage. The city of Linz in Austria, the third largest in the country, had a club that is a reference. It was Linzer Sport Klub, which was founded in 1908, but lasted less than 10 years.

The players had to go to the First World War and almost all of them died, and the stadium was destroyed by bombing. When the war ended, the few surviving players re-founded a club in 1919, but with a new name. Athletik" was added to the original name, so LSK became LASK, Linzer Athletik Sport Klub. The club had its good times in the 1960s, when it won the league and the cup in the same season and became the first Austrian institution, far from the capital Vienna, to do so.

But from that time on, the club's history was filled with a series of misfortunes and debts that would bring it to the brink of disappearance. The Austrian press reported in part of LASK's history that in 1995, the owner and founder of Riegerbank, a major bank, Wolfgang Rieger, joined the club. The new banker president came in to try to pay off the club's huge debts. But soon after, the team was relegated to the second division of the Austrian Bundesliga.

The secret history of the team

By this time, the president Wolfgang Rieger had fled the country, as an audit of his bank revealed several irregularities. Rieger was then accused of embezzlement and dishonest fraud, so he went to an incinerator in Vienna and burned several compromising documents. He went to live in Nice, France, with all the money he had embezzled. However, he returned shortly afterwards and went to prison. LASK returned to the Austrian Bundesliga First Division in 2007, but was relegated again in 2011, and soon after, was even relegated to the Third Division and was no longer a professional club. At the end of 2013, the good news began. Fourteen investors each put in 75,000 euros to attempt the miracle of a historic comeback from the Third Division. And they succeeded. In 2021 they played in the cup final, and have also played in other editions of the Europa League, up to this present moment in which everything will be a party against Liverpool on Thursday.