After twelve derbies without a win, Rapid Vienna was able to beat Austria again. The manager of the winners was carried away into an ill-advised action.
For the first time since September 2019, Rapid won a Vienna city derby. The team of coach Robert Klauß (previously Nuremberg) beat their arch-rivals 3-0 on Sunday and celebrated their triumph with abandon.
Managing director Steffen Hofmann then grabbed a megaphone and insulted the guests as “assholes” in front of their own fans, as a video showed. An action for which he received a lot of criticism and subsequently apologized: “The words were not intended for the public, but were inappropriate regardless. The joy of winning the derby remains, as do my regrets about the choice of words.”
Addressing the Austria supporters, he added: “I would therefore like to apologize for that, despite all the rivalry, this was and is not appropriate. I already apologized for this on Monday to Vienna Austria in the person of Manuel Ortlechner.”
Hofmann has been part of Rapid Vienna continuously since 2006, played more than 500 games for Hütteldorfer and moved to the office in 2018. He initially worked in the youth sector before taking on the position of sports coordinator at the beginning of 2022. At the end of the year, the Würzburg native became managing director.