Austria’s exclusion and the 1938 World Cup regulations

The 1938 World Cup, hosted in France, marked the first and only time in history in which a qualified team disappeared before the start of the tournament due to the geopolitical extinction of their country. The Austria team had secured its place in the qualifiers, but was dissolved after the Anschluss — the annexation of Austrian territory by Nazi Germany on March 12, 1938. The episode forced the international federation to apply emergency maneuvers in the sporting regulations to deal with the missing key and the mandatory integration of players into a neighboring country.

The rise of the Wunderteam and the impact of the Anschluss

In the 1930s, the Austrian national team was one of the great global football powers. Known as the Wunderteam (fantastic team) and led by striker Matthias Sindelar and coach Hugo Meisl, Austria practiced an offensive tactical system of quick passes and lots of movement. The team had reached the semi-finals of the 1934 World Cup and won the silver medal at the 1936 Olympics.

The place for the 1938 World Cup was confirmed after a victory over Latvia in the European qualifiers. However, the military invasion ordered by Adolf Hitler turned Austria into a province of the Third Reich. With the annexation, the Nazi government decreed the end of the Austrian football federation, determining that its athletes would exclusively represent Germany.

FIFA regulations and changes to the official table

The political elimination of a classified federation created a direct impasse in FIFA regulations. The tournament in France was played in a direct elimination format (“knockout”) from the first phase, equivalent to the round of 16. With the deletion of the Austrian wave, the entity adopted the following official measures:

Invitation to substitutes: FIFA offered the vacant place to England, but the English association declined the invitation, as at the time British federations still gave priority to their local tournaments to the detriment of the World Cup;

Automatic advance (Walkover): Latvia, who came second in Austria’s knockout group, were not called to inherit the position;

Key readjustment: Sweden, the team drawn to face the Austrians in the opening round, received the benefit of advancing directly to the quarter-finals without having to enter the field in the first phase;

The forced unification of squads and the uniform of the Third Reich

The incorporation of Austria required structural changes in the composition of the German team. Germany coach Sepp Herberger received direct orders from the Nazi authorities to create a unified team that would represent “Greater Germany”. The delegation’s internal regulations stipulated a mandatory mixed quota, forcing the coach to field an equal proportion of German and Austrian players in the starting lineup.

The structure required everyone called up to wear the German team’s shirt, emblazoned with the swastika. Austrian players who opposed the political demand suffered severe pressure from the regime. The great Austrian star, Matthias Sindelar, claimed injuries and used his advanced age (35 years old) as a justification for refusing to compete in the tournament for Germany, definitively ending his career in international matches so as not to wear the uniform of the invading country.

The German failure and the tournament champions in France

The imposing mixture of two different football schools did not work in practice and generated internal friction in the locker room. The data and records from that edition reflect the sporting failure of the unification project:

1. The unified Germany was eliminated in the first phase (round of 16) by Switzerland. The initial clash ended in a 1-1 draw, and the Swiss won the extra tiebreaker game 4-2.
2. That early elimination became the worst German performance in World Cup history. The German team would only fall again in the first round of a World Cup eighty years later, in Russia, in 2018.
3. Without the presence of the strong original Austrian team, the 1938 World Cup was won by Italy, who defeated Norway in the early stages and overcame Hungary in the big decision to secure their second world championship.

Austria’s blackout on the eve of a world championship remains the biggest bureaucratic and political anomaly in the official World Cup records. After the Second World War, the country regained its independence, its football federation was reactivated and FIFA regulations began to provide for stricter sanctions against government interference in the operations of their sports confederations, in order to prevent scenarios of forced extinction from once again dictating the competition table.