VIKINGS ‘ALL IN’ WITH STORM ON HORIZON

Vienna Vikings head coach Chris Calaycay refused to reduce Saturday’s European League of Football semi-final to a personal level, insisting that there was more to worry about on the Nordic Storm than the players that inflicted Championship Game heartbreak on his team last season.

Speaking at the Vikings’ weekly press call, Calaycay acknowledged the threat posed by the former Rhein Fire players currently lining up for the league’s newest team, but maintained that Vienna couldn’t narrow their focus that much in pursuit of a return to the final and a shot at a second crown in three seasons.

“We have to play our game,” the head coach stressed. “We need to be able to execute the game plan and not make the mistakes that cost field position or turnovers or things like that. I’m not going to worry too much about what they’re doing or their defence, their offence. We understand that [they have a good team], but it’s really about our team and how we execute our game plan.”

As a seasoned coach in European circles, Calaycay has seen a lot of Storm QB Jadrian Clark, especially as the American led Rhein to back-to-back titles in 2023 and ‘24, the latter at the Vikings’ expense. The respect is clearly there too — but only in the build-up to the game, which takes place at the same Hohe Warte arena where Vienna saw off the Paris Musketeers to secure the top seed two weeks ago.

“Jadrian does a great job,” Calaycay allowed. “He’s a great player, there’s no question about that. But I don’t look at last year and say, ‘Hey, they did this, so this is going to happen this year’. It’s completely different scenario, completely different teams.

“What they do well offensively is they spread you out — they’re in condensed formations, but they spread you out anyways. They go a ton of empty protection and Jadrian is very good at saying, ‘When this happens, I’m going here or I’m going there’. They’re very concise with that and Jadrian makes good decisions but, no, I don’t see it as revenge game.

“If they’re going to try to run the quarterback, like [Jaylon] Henderson did last game — and Nordic pulled it out versus Rhein Fire — then, great, let’s go tackle him, let’s go hit him. As a defensive guy, I’m like, ‘If they want to do that, go for it’, because I know our defensive guys and know they’re going to be violent. They’re going to tackle and, if you want to put your quarterback in that situation, okay. If there’s a tactical advantage that you see, okay. With every play call, there’s a there’s a positive and negative. If they want to go empty protection, they’ve got five guys to block — and they’ve got to be able to block our guys!”

With their seeding, and a bye through Wildcard Week secured, the Vikings were able to give their players a chance to rest and recuperate, but Calaycay and his staff still had to focus on the opening round of the playoffs, unsure of which of three teams they may be facing.

“At this time of the year, you know, we’re all in,” coach said. “Our staff does an amazing job. We’re all in. We knew we had three opponents to scout so, in your bye week, you’re working on things that you know, your stuff, situational stuff, all those little kind of types of things that you don’t normally get to practice.

“We knew that we had a game plan, in general, prepared for Rhein Fire, so our concentration in the bye week was a little bit more on the Storm or Madrid Bravos. We knew that the percentage chance of Madrid winning against Stuttgart, at least in our opinion, favoured the Surge, so more of the concentration went into Nordic.”

As well as emerging with a better record than their northern opponent, Vienna’s success in 2025 adds the weight of home advantage — with the raucous crowd witnessed by Gridiron at the Musketeers match — behind a squad already well-versed in playoff pressure.

“[Hohe Warte] has been a traditional football stadium for a long, long time, and we’ve had a lot of big games there, but I’d never seen a game like that, with that atmosphere,” Calaycay acknowledged. “And, now, to hear us having more ticket sales and having to bring in extra seats, that’s going to be a tough place to play. But that’s the advantage that we worked for all season. It’s a huge advantage for us to be able to play at home with the number one seed and having our fans backing us. That place is loud, super loud, so, hopefully, that gives us an advantage and we can put them in tough situations.

“We also have 22 players on our roster that were with us in 2022 when we won the championship, so almost half the guys on the roster have been in situations like this before. I haven’t checked from last year, but I’m pretty sure that that percentage is pretty high too, so the game means a lot. The situation against Paris was very much like a playoff game, so that was great experience for us as well.

“We’ll take that, and hopefully, for our advantage, be able to use that experience in this game.”