Josef Hickersberger born April 27, 1948 in Amstetten, Austria .Since January 2006 he is coaching the Austrian national team. Hickersberger's career as a player began with Austria Wien. Later he played for Kickers Offenbach, Fortuna Düsseldorf, Rapid Vienna and others. He was also a member of the Austrian national team during the Football World Cup 1978 in Argentina.

Since retiring as a player, Hickersberger has worked as a football coach. He was the coach of the Austrian national team at the Football World Cup 1990 in Italy. However, after the embarrasing 1-0 defeat against the Faroe Islands, he decided to stop and after that coached Fortuna Düsseldorf (1990-1992) and Austria Wien (1993/94).Hickersberger then worked for a few years in the Arabian region, where he trained several teams, among them the Bahrain national football team.In 2002 Hickersberger came back to Austria, and brought back success to Rapid viena. With him as coach, Rapid won the Austrian Championship of 2004/2005, nine years after the last triumph, and accordingly qualified for the UEFA Champions League group stage where Rapid faced the teams of Bayern Munich, Juventus Turin and Club Brugge.