Thomas Hitzlsperger

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Thomas Hitzlsperger
The hammer.jpg
Thomas Hitzlsperger at West Ham United
in March 2011
Personnel
birthday April 5th 1982
place of birth Munich ,  Germany
size 184 cm
position midfield
Juniors
Years station
1988-1989 VfB Forstinning
1989-2000 FC Bayern Munich
2000-2001 Aston Villa
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
2001-2005 Aston Villa 99 0(8)
2001 →  Chesterfield FC  (loan) 5 0(0)
2005-2010 VfB Stuttgart 125 (20)
2010 Lazio Rome 6 0(1)
2010-2011 West Ham United 11 0(2)
2011 West Ham United Res. 2 0(0)
2011–2012 VfL Wolfsburg 6 0(0)
2012-2013 Everton FC 7 0(0)
2012-2013 Everton FC Reserves 3 0(0)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
1997-1998 Germany U-15 12 0(1)
1998-1999 Germany U-16 14 0(1)
1999-2000 Germany U-17 10 0(3)
2000-2001 Germany U-18 8 0(2)
2001-2002 Germany U-20 4 0(1)
2002-2004 Germany U-21 20 0(3)
2004-2010 Germany 52 0(6)
1 Only league games are given.

Thomas Hitzlsperger (born April 5, 1982 in Munich ) is a former German soccer player and today's soccer official. The greatest success of his career was winning the German championship with VfB Stuttgart in the 2006/07 Bundesliga season . In addition, Hitzlsperger reached third place with the German national team at the 2006 World Cup and became vice European champion in 2008 . He has been the sports director of VfB Stuttgart since February 12, 2019 and chairman of the board since October 15, 2019, responsible for sports, corporate strategy and communication.

Player career

society

He started his career at VfB Forstinning . In 1989 he left the club and moved to the youth department of FC Bayern Munich before moving to the English Premier League club Aston Villa in 2000 .

Thomas Hitzlsperger at the championship celebration of VfB Stuttgart 2007

After playing there in the youth team, he made his league debut on January 13, 2001 in the 3-0 home defeat against Liverpool FC . It was his only assignment for Villa until the end of the season. At the beginning of the 2001/02 season Hitzlsperger was awarded to Chesterfield FC . But after just two months, the new coach Graham Taylor ordered him back to Birmingham , as some players were injured at Aston Villa. From then on he played his way into the regular team and became a top performer as well as a crowd favorite. The left-footed player completed a total of 99 games, scored eight goals and earned the nickname "Hitz The Hammer" due to his shooting power.

Before the 2005/06 season , Hitzlsperger moved to VfB Stuttgart on a free transfer and signed a two-year contract. On the first match day, August 6, 2005, Hitzlsperger made his Bundesliga debut against MSV Duisburg . On April 16, 2006 he scored his first Bundesliga goal in the game at Hannover 96 . In August 2007, his contract was extended to the end of June 2010. On the last two game days of the 2006/07 season, he scored the important 1-1 draw on the way to the German championship , which he and his team won on May 19, 2007, in the games at VfL Bochum and against Energie Cottbus . His equalizer against Cottbus that day, in which he turned a corner of his teammate Pável Pardo volley from a distance of around 20 meters, is one of the most spectacular and most important goals on the way to the fifth German championship title of the Stuttgart. He scored a total of seven goals in 30 league games in this championship season and, as a midfielder, together with Roberto Hilbert, behind strikers Mario Gómez and Cacau, took third place in the club's internal goalscorer list of the VfB championship team.

After Fernando Meira was deposed as team captain , Hitzlsperger was appointed the new captain of VfB before the 2008/09 season . He played his 100th Bundesliga game on February 14, 2009 against Hannover 96. On December 1, 2009, VfB team boss Markus Babbel removed Hitzlsperger from the captaincy. The reason for this was a sustained decline in the first half of the 2009/10 season .

On January 31, 2010, Hitzlsperger moved to the Italian first division club Lazio Rome . There he made his debut on February 7, 2010 in the 0-1 home defeat by Catania Calcio . In total, he played six games for Lazio in Serie A. On the 38th matchday, Hitzlsperger scored his first and only league goal in Italy in a 3-1 win against Udinese Calcio with the 1-0 lead.

For the 2010/11 season , Hitzlsperger moved to the English Premier League club West Ham United . Due to a serious thigh injury, however, he missed the start of the season and was out for several weeks. In his first competitive game, the FA Cup eighth finals against the second division club Burnley FC , he scored his first goal for West Ham with the interim 1-0; in the league this succeeded on March 5, 2011 (29th matchday) in a 3-0 home win over Stoke City . At the end of the season, West Ham rose, after which Hitzlsperger agreed with the club to terminate the contract.

After he hadn't found a new club in the weeks after the end of the season, VfL Wolfsburg signed Hitzlsperger in August 2011 . On August 19, 2011 he made his debut for VfL in the 1: 4 against Borussia Mönchengladbach in the starting line-up. After the end of the 2012 season, the contract with Hitzlsperger, which ran until 2014, was terminated by mutual agreement at the player's request.

After suffering from ankle injuries and a torn lateral meniscus since March 2012, he completed a trial training session at the English first division club Everton at the end of September 2012 . In early October 2012 he made his debut in the U-21 Premier League for Everton FC and stood on the pitch for over 90 minutes without having signed a contract. On October 19, 2012, Hitzlsperger was signed by Everton until January 2013. On November 10, 2012, the 11th matchday of the 2012/13 Premier League season , Hitzlsperger also played for Everton in the Premier League for the first time when he played in the home game against Sunderland (2-1) in the 86th division. Minute for Nikica Jelavić was substituted on. In January 2013, his contract was extended until the end of the 2012/13 season.

On September 3, 2013, Hitzlsperger ended his active career. The decision is "the result of a process with many club changes and some injuries".

National team

Thomas Hitzlsperger 2006 in the jersey of the DFB

Hitzlsperger played on October 9, 2004 in Tehran against Iran for the first time for the senior national team . After a rather moderate performance in the past season, his nomination for the German squad at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, where he was only used in the game for third place, was a surprise. In the European Championship qualifier against San Marino on September 6, 2006, Hitzlsperger scored his first two international goals . Since then, he has been a constant in the DFB dress under Joachim Löw .

On March 28, 2007 in the friendly against Denmark , Hitzlsperger wore the captain's armband for the first time for the German national soccer team.

For the European Football Championship in 2008 he became national coach Loew into the squad called the German team in which he came in five of six games used: twice in the preliminary round, quarter-final against Portugal in the semi-final against Turkey in which he the winning goal from Philipp Lahm prepared in the 90th minute, and in the final against Spain .

Although he was used in the successful World Cup qualification of the German team in 2008/09 in nine out of ten games, Hitzlsperger was no longer considered for the expanded squad for the 2010 World Cup .

On August 11, 2010 he played as captain against Denmark , when most of the regular players were spared after the World Cup, his 52nd and last game for the German national team.

Further career

Thomas Hitzlsperger (2014)

At the soccer World Cup in Brazil in 2014 , Hitzlsperger was featured as an expert in the ZDF morning magazine .

He has been an expert at Bayerischer Rundfunk since August 2015 and acts as a co-commentator at BR on live games.

On June 5, 2016, Hitzlsperger signed a contract with VfB Stuttgart as the representative of the board at the interface between the licensed player area and the club's management. After the football department of VfB had been outsourced, he was also accepted into the new club's executive committee in July 2017. After initially serving on this committee, Hitzlsperger was elected as a member of the Presidium for four years with 94.2 percent of the votes at the general meeting on December 3, 2017. In addition, Hitzlsperger has been the director of the young talent center since February 2018.

During the Confed Cup 2017 , Hitzlsperger commented as a TV expert for ARD . Hitzlsperger jumped in at the semi-final game Portugal - Chile on June 28, 2017 at short notice for the regular ARD expert Mehmet Scholl , who had left out of anger about the selection of the ARD topics. Hitzlsperger also replaced Scholl at the semi-finals between Germany and Mexico the next day. Hitzlsperger's commitment as a TV expert with ARD was continued during the 2018 World Cup in Russia .

On February 12, 2019, Hitzlsperger became the sports director of VfB Stuttgart 1893 AG , which runs the professional department of VfB Stuttgart . In addition, ARD and Thomas Hitzlsperger ended their collaboration due to his new role at VfB Stuttgart. In the final phase of the 2018/19 season, Hitzlsperger replaced head coach Markus Weinzierl with interim coach Nico Willig and hired Sven Mislintat as sports director. Willing could not prevent the relegation against Union Berlin . For the 2019/20 season , Hitzlsperger signed Tim Walter as the new head coach. On October 15, 2019, Hitzlsperger was appointed Chairman of the Board of Management by the Supervisory Board. In addition to the sports department, he is responsible for corporate strategy and communication.

Personal and social engagement

Hitzlsperger was born in Munich in 1982 as the youngest of seven children and grew up in the Wagmühle district of Forstinningen . He has five brothers and one sister. In 1998 he finished his school career with the secondary school leaving certificate and then learned the profession of office clerk until 2003 .

Even during his footballing activity, Hitzlsperger was involved in various social projects with an anti-racist focus. He regularly writes articles for Störungsmelder , an initiative by Zeit Online against right-wing radicalism in Germany. From 2009 to 2013 he was the interlocutor for the column Everything but Football of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit .

He also supports the association Show your face! For a cosmopolitan Germany e. V. , which campaigns nationwide against xenophobia, racism, anti-Semitism and right-wing extremist violence. He is also involved in the UBUNTU Africa project , which takes care of HIV-positive children in South Africa. Hitzlsperger appeared at the World Cup in Brazil as a football expert in the ZDF morning magazine.

In 2009, a year before the soccer World Cup in South Africa, he shot the documentary Thomas Hitzlsperger and the Township Children with the well-known actor Walter Sittler and his wife, the director Sigrid Klausmann , in the township in Khayelitsha .

In an interview with the newspaper Die Zeit in January 2014, Hitzlsperger said: “I express myself about my homosexuality. I would like to promote a public discussion - the discussion about homosexuality among professional athletes. ”This made him the first prominent German professional soccer player to publicly declare that he was homosexual . Hitzlsperger's move was praised by athletes, sports officials and politicians and received great attention in the national and international press.

Thomas Hitzlsperger was the editor-in-chief responsible for the 156th issue of the magazine 11 Freunde , which was written by active and former soccer players. He is the ambassador of the Federal Magnus Hirschfeld Foundation .

Thomas Hitzlsperger is a member of the German Academy for Football Culture .

successes

society

National team

Awards

Web links

Commons : Thomas Hitzlsperger  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matthias Arnhold: Thomas Hitzlsperger - Matches and Goals in Bundesliga . Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. September 23, 2015. Accessed October 9, 2015.
  2. ↑ Please no breakthrough! from May 17, 2010 on sueddeutsche.de
  3. ↑ Trust in Babbel - Hitzlsperger no longer a captain from December 1, 2009 on bundesliga.de
  4. ↑ Thomas Hitzlsperger leaves the VfB ( memento from February 12, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) from January 31, 2010 on vfb.de
  5. ↑ Ballardini waddles Hitzlsperger from February 8, 2010 on kicker.de
  6. ↑ Hammers sign The Hammer ( memento June 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) June 5, 2010 on whufc.com
  7. ↑ Hitzlsperger injured again: four months break zeit.de, October 14, 2010
  8. ^ Sam sets out promotion plan ( memento from June 25, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) whufc.com
  9. ↑ From the island back to the Bundesliga: Wolves sign Thomas Hitzlsperger , message on the VfL Wolfsburg website from August 17, 2011 (accessed on August 17, 2011)
  10. ^ Salihamidzic, Chris and Hitzlsperger leave VfL Wolfsburg ; vfl-wolfsburg.de from May 18, 2012
  11. ↑ Hitzlsperger at Everton in trial training at www.spiegel.de from September 25, 2012, accessed on September 25, 2012
  12. ↑ evertonfc.com: Norwich U21s v Everton , October 8, 2012, accessed October 9, 2012
  13. ^ Hitzlsperger signs evertonfc.com, accessed October 19, 2012
  14. ↑ evertonfc.com: Hitzlsperger To Stay With Blues , January 11, 2013, accessed January 11, 2013
  15. ^ Resignation of Thomas Hitzlsperger: "I think it's enough". (sueddeutsche.de). Retrieved September 3, 2013 .
  16. ^ Matthias Arnhold: Thomas Hitzlsperger - Goals in International Matches . Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. September 23, 2015. Accessed October 9, 2015.
  17. ^ ARD expert Thomas Hitzlsperger: What you need to know about him. In: tz.de. June 16, 2016, accessed March 24, 2018 .
  18. ↑ Web chat after the TV debut: The chat with Thomas Hitzlsperger for reading. In: Bayerischer Rundfunk . August 16, 2015, archived from the original on May 29, 2016 ; accessed on August 16, 2015 .
  19. ↑ The BR football expert: Thomas Hitzlsperger. In: Bayerischer Rundfunk . August 16, 2016, accessed May 29, 2015 .
  20. ↑ Reinforcement for the VfB management ( Memento from June 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) VfB Stuttgart June 5, 2016
  21. ↑ The AG starts its work at VfB Stuttgart July 7, 2017
  22. ↑ Realignment of the youth division VfB Stuttgart February 9, 2018
  23. ↑ a b ARD expert: That's why Mehmet Scholl suddenly disappeared at the Confed Cup. stz.de, July 5, 2017, accessed June 19, 2018 .
  24. ^ Photo report: Massive dispute between ARD and football expert Mehmet Scholl. meedia.de, July 5, 2017, accessed on June 19, 2018 .
  25. ↑ Dispute with ARD - Scholl left the Confed Cup, Hitzlsperger took over. stuttgarter-nachrichten.de, July 5, 2017, archived from the original on June 20, 2018 ; accessed on June 19, 2018 .
  26. ↑ High VfB share among the World Cup experts - TV work in the Stuttgart rhythm. stz.de, June 17, 2018, accessed June 19, 2018 .
  27. ↑ Michael Reschke recalled, Thomas Hitzlsperger new sports director , vfb.de, February 12, 2019, accessed on February 12, 2019.
  28. ↑ Hitzlsperger and ARD end their cooperation. Retrieved February 19, 2019 .
  29. ↑ Thomas Hitzlsperger becomes CEO , vfb.de, October 8, 2019, accessed on October 8, 2019.
  30. ↑ Hitzlsperger's profile at the malfunction reporter ( Memento from June 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  31. ↑ Oliver Fritsch: Thomas Hitzlsperger: "I have registered for an Italian course" . In: The time . October 9, 2013
  32. ↑ Show your face! - Prominent supporters
  33. ↑ UBUNTU Africa
  34. ↑ Commitment in South Africa: Hitzlsperger and the township children. In: stuttgarter-nachrichten.de. May 31, 2010, accessed January 21, 2018 .
  35. ^ A b Carolin Emcke & Moritz Müller-Wirth: Thomas Hitzlsperger: "Homosexuality is ignored in football" . In: The time . No. 3, January 9, 2014
  36. ↑ Thomas Hitzlsperger acknowledges his homosexuality . In: Zeit Online . January 8, 2014
  37. ↑ My conscious and free decision (PDF, 3 pages)
  38. ↑ Michael Horeni: Hitzlsperger comment: Homophobia has not been defeated . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . January 8, 2014
  39. ↑ Lisa Caspari & Oliver Fritsch: Homosexuality: Merkel praises Hitzlsperger's coming out . In: Zeit Online. January 8, 2014
  40. ↑ James Riach: Thomas Hitzlsperger: World leaders and top sportsmen all show support . January 8, 2014
  41. ↑ Press comments on Hitzlsperger: "He dribbled around hypocrisy". In: FAZ.NET . January 9, 2014, accessed January 14, 2014 .
  42. ↑ A lack of gay idols For Hitzlsperger, football is not an environment for coming out. On rundschau-online.de, February 11, 2015. Accessed June 12, 2016.
  43. ↑ https://www.fussball-kultur.org/adresse/address/thomas-hitzlsperger
  44. ↑ at DFB.DE EXKLUSIV accessed on June 26, 2019
  45. ↑ Hitzlsperger receives ethics award. In: sport1.de. March 7, 2015, accessed April 30, 2015 (presented on May 2).
personal data
SURNAME Hitzlsperger, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH April 5th 1982
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich , Germany