Günter Schlegel

Günter Schlegel (born January 10, 1926 in Zeitz ; † February 13, 2004 ) was a German football player who played 293 games and 166 in the Oberliga Nord from 1949 to 1960 as a player in Göttingen 05 , Hamburger SV and Concordia Hamburg Scored goals.

career

Göttingen, 1949 to 1953

Günter Schlegel, who grew up in Zeitz, in southern Saxony-Anhalt, learned to play football in the same club as the later GDR national player Manfred Kaiser , in the youth department of SpVgg Zeitz there in 1910 . After the Second World War he moved to Lower Saxony in the Weser Uplands and played in the Hildesheim Association for Preußen Hameln until 1948. He tried it for the first time in the 1948/49 round at Hamburger SV, but came under coach Hans Tauchert only to a few appearances in friendly games and temporarily returned to Zeitz. In winter Schlegel joined Göttingen 05, where he was eligible to play from January 1949. For the black and yellow team from Maschpark he played in the former 13th, now 12th relay - Holstein Kiel had been excluded since November 1948 - in the second half of all eleven games for Göttingen and scored four goals. The 05er would have been relegated through the 11th place, but due to the suspension of relegation and the simultaneous expansion of the league to 16 clubs for the 1949/50 round, Schlegel and his new club remained in the Oberliga Nord. His debut for Göttingen was spectacular: on January 23, 1949, the black and yellow team managed a 2-0 home win against leaders FC St. Pauli with the new half-striker . In front of 17,000 spectators Schlegel scored the 2-0 final score in the 51st minute against the “miracle team” with Harald Stender , Walter Dzur and Hans Appel .

In his first full year of play at Göttingen 05, 1949/50, now Willi Schäfer coached the team, Schlegel, who optionally acts as a half-forward or center-forward, plays all 30 league games and is an eleven-time goalscorer. Again he fights with his team against relegation, Göttingen ends up in 13th place with 22:38 points. Schlegel, equipped with brilliant technology, game intelligence and enormous shooting and header strength, made the breakthrough in the record year of the HSV-Torfabrik, 1950/51 , with 28 goals in 30 games. From this round he is one of the best offensive players in the north. The sovereign master HSV with record scorer Herbert Wojtkowiak (40 goals) in the ranks is experiencing the upswing of the Göttingen. In front of a record crowd of 22,000 spectators, coach Günter Brust's team prevailed on October 15, 1950 in the Maschpark at home with 2-0 goals and even took over eight days later with a 4-2 win against Bremer SV with 15-5 points temporarily the championship lead in the north. The Göttingen offensive director excelled in seven games - against Eintracht Braunschweig, Bremerhaven 93 (even in both games), Bremer SV, Altona 93, Concordia Hamburg and Arminia Hannover - as a double goal scorer in this round. In the 8-0 victory against relegated Itzehoer SV, he scored four goals. His powerful free kicks and penalties became a specialty. At the end of the round, Göttingen came in 9th with 31:33 points. When Fritz Rebell took over as coach in the university town from 1951/52 , the upswing even led the Göttingen to the top of the league in the north. One of the protagonists in the circle of players was the undisputed darling of the Göttingen audience, Günter Schlegel. With 34:26 points, the team of trainer Rebell and goalkeeper Gerd Skudlarek took sixth place and Schlegel contributed 17 goals. In his fifth year in Göttingen, 1952/53, the man from Zeitz won the top scorer's crown in the north with 26 goals , followed by Kurt Hinsch (23) and Emil Maier (21). Together with teammates Stefan Roszali and Karl Wasch , Schlegel's dangerousness in goals had brought Göttingen with 73 goals even closer to the goal quota of master HSV with 78 goals and thus led to 5th place. Schlegel scored three goals each against VfB Lübeck, Bremerhaven 93 and St. Pauli and was a double goal scorer in five other matches. From 1949 to 1953 Schlegel completed 131 league games for Göttingen 05 and scored 87 goals. After five successful years in Göttingen, Hamburger SV brought the 27-year-old into the team with the diamond on his chest for the 1953/54 round at Rothenbaum.

Hamburger SV, 1953 to 1958

Ironically, in Günter Schlegel's first season, 1953/54, at the series champion Hamburger SV, the Rothosen suffered a crisis. The newcomer from Göttingen made 24 appearances and scored 14 goals. However, HSV sank in the fifth year with coach Georg Knöpfle in the deep midfield to 11th place. The four points that were deducted by punishment because of the inadmissible financial contributions when soliciting Willi Schröder also led to this , but even with four points more, HSV would only have come in fifth. On October 10, 1953, one day before the World Cup qualifying match between the national soccer team in Stuttgart and Saarland, Schlegel ran alongside Heinz Wewetzer , Hans Tkotz , Werner Heitkamp and Alfred Beck in the representative match between North Germany and West Germany in Dortmund . In the case of national coach Sepp Herberger , the technician with scoring qualities - just like the Hanoverians - but does not make it into the group of candidates for the national team.

After the soccer world championship in 1954 , the team of Martin Wilke and Günther Mahlmann took over the training management at HSV . The two great talents Klaus Stürmer and Uwe Seeler are pushing their way from the youth . The round started with a 3-0 home win on August 29, 1954 against VfB Oldenburg . The new inner trio with striker, Seeler and Schlegel is convincing and is also characterized by two goals (Seeler and Schlegel). With 108:41 goals, clear conditions are ensured in the north. The standard formation of the best attack by far was: Walter Schemel , Klaus Stürmer, Uwe Seeler, Günter Schlegel and Herbert Wojtkowiak. Schlegel and Uwe Seeler share the top scorer's crown in the north with 28 goals each. On the way to this, the 28-year-old Schlegel succeeded in the games against Holstein Kiel, Werder Bremen, St. Pauli (two goals each), TV Eimsbüttel and VfL Wolfsburg (three each) and on January 30, 1955 in an 8-0 win against the later relegated Harburger TB four goals. Hamburg started the final round of the German soccer championship in 1955 with a 1-0 win against SV Sodingen with a goal by Günter Schlegel in the 81st minute. HSV missed the finals due to the 1: 2 home defeat on June 5th in front of 76,000 spectators in the Volksparkstadion against 1. FC Kaiserslautern . Schlegel gave Hamburg a 1-0 lead in the fourth minute and was in action in all six final round matches in the Hamburg internal storm. The ex-Göttingen resident contributed 19 goals to defending his title in the north in 1956 and also underlined his outstanding skills in the final round . After six games in Group II, Borussia Dortmund and HSV were both tied with points 9: 3 and the Westphalia only moved into the final with a better goal difference, where they won 4: 2 on June 24, 1956 in Berlin. Success against Karlsruher SC could bring the German championship title. Schlegel had again played all six final round matches and scored four goals. In the DFB Cup 1955/56 he was used in the semifinals against Fortuna Düsseldorf and on August 5, 1956 in Karlsruhe in the final against the defending champions Karlsruher SC . Two goals by Bernhard Termath decided the game in the Wildpark Stadium for the Badeners.

From the 1956/57 season, now the other HSV talents Gerhard Krug , Uwe Reuter and Jürgen Werner also belonged to the circle of the regular formation, the 30-year-old moved from the attack increasingly into the defense. He played 21 games and scored six goals. In the 1957 finals, he was only in action in Düsseldorf in a 2-1 win against 1. FC Saarbrücken on June 16 in the left wing position. For his fourth Northern Championship in 1958, Schlegel contributed another 20 games with four goals. In the preliminary round he was also in the semi-final defeat in the DFB Cup in 1957 on November 24 in Hanover against Fortuna Düsseldorf as a right defender on the field. In the final round in 1958 he did not play a group game but was used on May 18 in Hanover in the final of the German championship as a left connector against Schalke 04 . However, the HSV attack with Gerhard Krug, Klaus Stürmer, Uwe Seeler, Schlegel and Uwe Reuter could not prevail against the "miners" in the 3-0 defeat.

From 1953 to 1958 Günter Schlegel completed 122 games for Hamburger SV in the Oberliga Nord and scored 71 goals. In the finals from 1955 to 1958 another 14 games and six goals were added. The 32-year-old joined Concordia Hamburg in the summer of 1958 and was in all 30 league games for “Cordi” under coaches Hans Rohde and, from March 1959, Martin Wilke, in the 1958/59 season. Schlegel played his last league game on November 29, 1959 in a 3-0 home win against Eintracht Osnabrück. After a total of 293 league games from 1949 to 1959 with 166 goals, Günter Schlegel ended his higher-class career in 1960.

End of career

In northern Hamburg, at SC Poppenbüttel, Schlegel ended his career in the Hansa Association League in the amateur camp from the 1960/61 season and devoted himself more to his professional activity as a businessman.

literature

• Jens Reimer Prüß (Ed.): Bung bottle with flat pass cork. The history of the Oberliga Nord 1947–1963. Klartext, Essen 1991, ISBN 3-88474-463-1 .
• Hardy Grüne , Lorenz Knieriem: Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 8: Player Lexicon 1890–1963. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2006, ISBN 3-89784-148-7 .
• Werner Skrentny, Jens Reimer Prüß: Hamburg sports club. Always first class. Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 1998, ISBN 3-89533-220-8 .
• Raphael Keppel, Die deutsche Fußball-Oberliga 1946–1963, Volume 1, Sport- und Spielverlag Edgar Hitzel, 1989, ISBN 3-9802172-3-X .

Web link

Players A – Z (bung bottle) , visited on March 17, 2020