‘NEW YEAR, NEW TEAM’ APPROACH TO FINAL FOR VIENNA

Vienna Vikings head coach Chris Calaycay is no stranger to success with the Austrian team, but is taking a typically no-nonsense approach to their third appearance in the European League of Football Championship Game.

The Vikings were beaten finalists last season, but know the taste of winning the ELF title after conquering Europe in the debut 2022 season. A favourite for the crown since the beginning of the 2025 campaign, Vienna duly emerged with the best regular season record and the #1 seed, before seeing off the upstart Nordic Storm at the semi-final stage. Calaycay knows, however, that the biggest test still lies ahead — and similarly, that there is no point reflecting on last year’s disappointment as they head into Stuttgart’s MHP Arena to take on the hometown Surge.

“I never go in that direction of saying, ‘Hey, remember how you felt, that bad feeling’,” he explained. “This is a new season. It’s a new team. I always tell the guys that the experience we have together is always a journey, and the wins, the losses and everything else is about the experience that you gain as a person, that we gain as a team and we want to learn from that every time. This is not a ‘last year they did this and last year they did this or this was the result’ thing. Nor is it ‘this is how you felt’. This team is on the run that it’s on right now, 11 and one, and we’re approaching the final as any other game week.

“Of course, we’d be silly to say, ‘Hey, we don’t know that this is the championship game and this is everything’s on the line’ because, when you execute football, you can’t be thinking about those things. You’ve got to be thinking about your job, thinking about your assignment, your technique. And, if we can focus our guys in that direction, I’m 100 percent confident that we’ll go out and do our jobs.”

The Vikings met the Surge at the semi-final stage two seasons ago, losing to the German side, who went on to lose to the Rhein Fire on the biggest stage, but Calaycay again says that there will only be a limited amount of knowledge that carries over from that game.

“There’s some some similar players, but you look at the defensive coaching staff that was there, the offensive coaching staff was there, and you see pieces of the puzzle that are still in place in 2025. I went back and checked on that game because it was a very close game, to see what would have made the difference It was a seven-point game, I think it was 40-33, and we ended up losing — and my big takeaway from that thing is that you can’t turn the ball over.

“When I went back and watched, maybe they ran a trick play against us, so is that going to come again. You try to piece together as many parts of the information throughout a season, scouting the Surge where you can. We can’t predict everything but, as coaches, we do analytics for tendencies to give our players the best idea [of what might come]. But the main thing is that we line up and run our defence, run our offence and are efficient at it.”

With more on the line than even that 2023 semi-final, the close relationship between the two head coaches has greater significance, with Stuttgart’s Jordan Neuman having been on Calaycay’s Vikings staff in the Austrian League.

“I won’t be diplomatic, but I’ll be real,” Calaycay joked. “He’s one of my closest friends and we have a ton of respect for each other. We’ve kept in touch all these years, and I can’t say enough about Jordan as a man. As a coach, he does an outstanding job, the way he builds his culture within his team. So there’s nothing but respect there.

“Having said that, Jordan and I didn’t talk for the last three weeks! It was strange because, when we met in the semi-final in 2023, we talked quite a bit, except for game week, but, heading into this, it means a lot to both teams — returning to the Championship game means a ton for our programme, and I know, for them, being in Stuttgart with the Championship game means a ton for them, so we’ve just both kept it at that respect right now. But I’m sure, no matter what happens in the game, we’ll have an embrace at midfield. One of us will be champion, the other one won’t, but that won’t change any aspect of of the respect that we have for each other.”