The Austria national football team is the association football team that represents the country of Austria in international competition and is controlled by the Austrian Football Association (German: Österreichischer Fußball Bund).

Austria has qualified for seven World Cups, most recently in 1998. The country has not yet qualified for a European Championship; it will play in the tournament for the first time in 2008 when it co-hosts the event with Switzerland.

Austria is the home team of the tournament so they joined tournament directly without playing qualifications.

Austria in Group B in the tournament with Crotia, Germany and Poland.Austrian will play some matches on their home,so Austrian people’s expectations are too high like Switzerland.Austria will play their first match against Crotia on 8 June 2008 at18:00 in Vienna - Ernst Happel.

Austrian Players

Goalkeepers: Christian Gratzei, Jürgen Macho, Alex Manninger, Helge Payer

Defenders: Johannes Ertl, Ronald Gercaliu, Martin Hiden, Andreas Ibertsberger, Markus Katzer, Jürgen Patocka,  Emanuel Pogatetz, Sebastian Prödl, Franz Schiemer, Joachim Standfest, Martin Stranzl

Midfielders: René Aufhauser, Christian Fuchs, György Garics, Andreas Ivanschitz, Veli Kavlak, Christoph Leitgeb, Michael Mörz, Thomas Prager, Klaus Salmutter, Yüksel Sariyar, Jürgen Säumel, Markus Weissenberger

Forwards: Martin Harnik, Marc Janko, Roman Kienast, Saniel Kuljic, Roland Linz

Josef Hickersberger - Manager Of Austria National Football Team

Josef Hickersberger (born April 27, 1948 in Amstetten, Austria) is a former professional football player and former coach of the Austrian cult-club Rapid Vienna. Since January 2006 he is coaching the Austrian national team.

Hickersberger’s career as a player began with Austria Wien. Later he played for Kickers Offenbach, Fortuna Düsseldorf, Rapid Vienna and others. He was also a member of the Austrian national team during the Football World Cup 1978 in Argentina.

Since retiring as a player, Hickersberger has worked as a football coach. He was the coach of the Austrian national team at the Football World Cup 1990 in Italy. However, after the embarrasing 1-0 defeat against the Faroe Islands, he decided to stop and after that coached Fortuna Düsseldorf (1990-1992) and Austria Wien (1993/94).

Hickersberger then worked for a few years in the Arabian region, where he trained several teams, among them the Bahrain national football team.

In 2002 Hickersberger came back to Austria, and brought back success to Rapid. With him as coach, Rapid won the Austrian Championship of 2004/2005, nine years after the last triumph, and accordingly qualified for the UEFA Champions League group stage where Rapid faced the teams of Bayern Munich, Juventus Turin and Club Brugge.