Kühbauer to discuss Liverpool clash on ORF radio show

LASK coach Didi Kühbauer will discuss his career and the team’s upcoming Champions League match against Liverpool on ORF Radio OÖ’s Linzer Torte programme, ORF reports. The interview will air on Sunday, October 11, from 8 to 10 a.m., ahead of the match in Linz on October 14.

Kühbauer, a former Rapid star and Austria international, says Liverpool has been his dream club since childhood. He described the fixture as a great honour for LASK, while acknowledging that his team will go into the match as clear underdogs.

In the interview with Maria Theiner, Kühbauer also recalls growing up in Burgenland in the 1970s. “My childhood was happy, but not easy. Money certainly did not grow on trees in our family,” he says. He learned early what it meant to fight for things. With no under-10 team at his hometown club, Mattersburg, he played for its under-14s at the age of eight against much older opponents.

The conversation covers his playing career in Austria and abroad, as well as his first call-up to the national team under coach Ernst Happel. Before Kühbauer’s debut, Happel asked him, “Are you afraid, Wizard?” Kühbauer recalls that “Wizard” was one of the coach’s favourite words. He says coaches from that era would find the modern game very different, with the role of coaches as leaders having changed considerably.

Kühbauer also discusses how he helped LASK recover from a slump and how he has changed from a hot-headed interviewee into a more reflective conversationalist. He says he prefers to be called Didi: “Only Mum really calls me Dietmar.” The programme will also be available as a podcast after broadcast on ORF Sound and other podcast platforms.