A little funny story from Niko’s RB Salzburg days
this is from former rb salzburg player martin hinteregger’s autobiography and back then niko was the team’s assistant coach lol
The Night in the Elevator
February 2012. I was 19, a regular starter for RB Salzburg, and consistently delivering strong performances. This led coach Ricardo Moniz to promote me to captain. I wore the armband in the Europa League against Metalist Kharkiv and in the league against Sturm, Ried, and Mattersburg. What can I say: athletic success, paired with praise from my boss, mixed with youthful recklessness — an explosive combination. I went out on the town with a few players. We partied, and for me, it ended up getting a bit late.
I was living in an top-floor apartment back then, which I could easily reach by elevator. As nice as the apartment was, it had one drawback. It was brutally hot in there. The only cool spot was — you guessed it — in the elevator. That night, the heat was really getting to me; I couldn’t fall asleep. So I grabbed a pillow and a blanket and made myself comfortable in the elevator. The good thing was: I was the only one using it. So there was no danger of being sent up and down the building in the middle of the night.
Being conscientious as I was, I set an alarm on my phone. After all, we had training in the morning. As I said, it was pleasantly cool in there. I fell asleep quickly. I really slept well – and was only woken around noon by loud ringing and knocking on my door. At first, I didn’t know where I was. Oh right, in the elevator. I stepped out and saw Salzburg team manager Mark Lang standing in front of my door. I think we were both startled.
“Martin, what’s going on? We’ve been trying to reach you for hours. We were worried.”
What had happened to my alarm? I had set it on my phone, after all. It took a few more moments for me to collect myself. Then it all started to make sense. After making myself comfortable in the elevator that night, I set my phone down next to me — stupidly, outside the elevator. The door closed. So I was inside the elevator, and the phone was outside. That’s why I didn’t hear either the alarm or the team manager’s calls in the morning. Sitcom directors would probably pay their writers a lot of money for a gag like that. In my defense, I have to say that I had, of course, thought about the door closing. That’s why I was lying with my body inside and my legs outside the elevator. But apparently it was so pleasantly cool that at some point during the night I curled up and pulled my feet in — which meant the door was finally able to do its job and closed.
I packed up my things at a leisurely pace; training was already over anyway, and I headed to the training ground. I felt really bad – and even worse when I heard that Niko Kovač had covered for me.
Before Niko won the DFB Cup with Frankfurt and later the double with FC Bayern, he had started his coaching career in Salzburg as Moniz’s assistant. That day, a substitute training session was on the schedule: five-on-five. Moniz instructed Kovač to bring the bibs onto the field. Moniz handed them out to the players, and one was left over. “Hey, Niko,” said Moniz, “we have one extra jersey.” Niko immediately realized what the often absent-minded Moniz didn’t see: that I was missing. “Yeah, sorry, Ricardo, I picked up one bib too many.”
Kovač told the team manager to call me. Mark Lang tried eight times before driving to my apartment and ringing me out.
Niko, who places great value on discipline but is also a very understanding person, confronted me: “You do realize that I saved your ass, right?” In the end, Kovač’s efforts didn’t help. Somehow, Moniz found out anyway and confronted me. I apologized. But Moniz couldn’t accept that I had had two or three beers. As captain, he rightly expected more responsibility from me. He dropped me from the squad for the upcoming match against Wacker Innsbruck and reassigned me to the amateurs.
The Red Bull Juniors were playing at the time in the Regionalliga West, Austria’s third-highest division. It was still the winter break there, and a friendly against St. Johann/Pongau was scheduled. Moniz watched our performance. After 20 minutes, I scored a goal from just behind the halfway line, then added a header. I was highly motivated and played a really strong match. We won 6–1.
The suspension was quickly over. In the next match against Rapid, I was already back in the squad. However, under Moniz, I never got the captain’s armband back.
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