As a player, Wegleitner was a big name, especially at Seewinkel, where he was particularly active at Illmitz and Mönchhof. He started as a coach at his parent club before continuing his career at the Admira Academy. From the Young Violets he eventually moved on to head coach at Austrian cooperative club SV Stryffing, with Wechleitner set to be appointed to the Austrian specialists in January. Since then, he has been active as Wimmer’s “parallel,” who will now accompany him until the end of the season.
Austria still have one game scheduled in the qualifying group (at Blau Weiß Linz on Saturday) before following up the European Cup play-offs with a clash against WAC. If the current standings in the table remain the same, Austria will have to play at Wolfsburg on May 21 as they lost the lead in the WAC qualifying group after their recent 4-0 direct defeat and hence no longer have home advantage. The winner of this game will play the last international ticket against the fifth place in the Championship group on May 24th and 28th.
Due to recent poor results, the Violets let go of their previous coach. In a statement, sporting director Jürgen Werner said: “Based on the developments in the last few games, we have come to the conclusion that the team needs a new impetus to achieve our season goal of the playoffs. We have full confidence in Christian Wechleitner. He knows our team very well and has already proven his qualities as head coach at our co-op club SV Stripfing. We would like to thank Michi Wimmer for his tireless commitment to Austria Vienna. It’s always difficult to fire a coach, especially with Michy Wimmer, who we’ve had a good relationship with and his character is absolutely top notch. We wish him all the best for his future.”
Christian Wechleitner, Austria’s head coach, said: “Our full focus is on preparing ourselves as best as possible for the next game in Linz. We don’t have much time, we are looking forward and we will do our best to play the next two games positively. Our goal is to give our fans two additional playoff games with positive results.