“Es is woa, i hob ned die beste Nochred”, it says in Dr. Kurt Ostbahn’s “Joker”. That doesn’t apply to Louis Schaub. Since his brace against Israel, at the latest, he’s had a good after-talk as a joker. Although he’d rather not be one…

Really now, Alessandro Schöpf?, many of the much quoted eight million Austrian team bosses will have asked themselves when they saw the line-up for the Israel game. But Foda already knew what he was doing. Of course, the Bielefeld legionnaire, who has never played a full international match, was not scheduled for 90 minutes in his 31st international match either. But Schaub, his “competitor” on the right side of midfield, just works better as a wild card.

Stöger, Vastic, Harnik left behind

Seriously. Schaub had long been the record wild card in ÖFB history since he left Peter Stöger, Ivica Vastic and Martin Harnik behind with his fifth goal as a substitute in the 2-1 win over Northern Ireland almost exactly a year ago. He has now scored seven of his eight international goals as a wild card after his brace in the 4-2 win over Israel, only appearing in the starting eleven for his golden goal in the 1-0 win over Georgia in October 2017. “Of course it would be nicer if I played from the start, but of course it’s also a quality when you come in and can still give the game something,” the Cologne legionnaire also struggles a little with his joker image.

The history of the double joker

However, he has rather consolidated this with his two goals. Because the ÖFB team players who scored a brace before him, fresh off the bench, could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Franz Hanreiter was the first in 1936, when he was substituted for Adi Vogl after just 30 minutes in Austria’s 5-4 win in Spain and was then responsible for the 4-4, 5-4 winning goal and Spain’s first home defeat (!) in the 69th and 73rd minutes. “He really is a magnificent lad, this Hanreiter, the man who has almost no weight at all, but the courage of a lion,” the Sport-Tagblatt raved about him the other day. And an unnamed substitute whispered: “Now at least the grumbling will end for a while. You could have heard the same sentence in Klagenfurt yesterday.

From Hütter to Linz

But on with the double wild card goalscorers. It was to be 59 years before an international player, Adi Hütter, followed in Hanreiter’s footsteps in the 7-0 win over Liechtenstein in April 1995. In comparison, things went on almost in quick succession after that. Three years later, Liechtenstein were again the opponents when Peter Stöger scored two wild card goals in a 6-0 win, Christian Mayrleb did the same in a 5-1 win over Iran in Toni Polster’s farewell game in September 2000. The last player to score twice was substitute Roland Linz in a 2-3 win in Poland in September 2005 – until Louis Schaub came along 16 years later.

By the way: The grandfather of all joker goals in the national team (even if the word “joker” was not used in the language of the time) was Hansi Horvath from Simmering, who scored the very first goal by a substitute for Austria in 1924 in a 2:2 against Hungary

Joker with a good after-talk’

Will the Joker gala give Louis Schaub enough of a case to be allowed to start from the start once again against Moldova? “We know, of course, that Louis is a player who always prepares goals or scores them himself when he is substituted. That’s what makes him stand out,” said team boss Franco Foda. But you can also have a good after-talk as a “joker”: Ask Oliver Bierhoff. With twelve goals, he is the record joker for the DFB, the association he has helped shape for many years in leading positions.