Aatos Lehtonen

Aatos "Atski" Ensio Lehtonen (born February 15, 1914 in Helsinki , † April 10, 2005 in Hyvinkää ) was a Finnish football , bandy , handball and basketball player and football coach. As a player, Lehtonen was twice Finnish champion with HJK Helsinki and in 1937 champion in bandy. Overall, he coached the Finnish national football team in 70 games.

career

The center forward played for Helsingin Ponnistus from 1931 to 1933 before moving to local rivals HJK Helsinki. There Lehtonen developed into a showcase striker, who won the Mestaruussarja scorer rating five times in a row between 1935 and 1939 . In 1936 he won his first championship with HJK. His second was to follow in 1938 . In 1937 he managed to score 25 goals in 14 games. In his career he scored 109 goals in the Mestaruussarja. In 1936 Aatos Lehtonen made his first appearance in the Finnish national team and was part of the Olympic selection that took part in the soccer tournament of the Summer Games in Berlin. 17 more were to follow. He scored seven goals in these 18 games. At the age of 33 he ended his career as a player in 1947 and then became the coach of the Finnish national team. For the past two years, Lehtonen has been the player-coach of HJK. He stayed there until 1955, during which time he led the team in 51 international games, including the Olympic Games in his own country . In 1955 he was replaced by the German Kurt Weinreich and was then coach of HJK ​​Helsinki from 1956 to 1958. In 1959 he was awarded the national team's coaching post for the second time. By 1961 he was coach of Finland in another 19 games. During this time, among other things, a 3-2 victory over the GDR team on September 6, 1959 in Helsinki was achieved . Another game against the GDR was lost a year later in Rostock but 1: 5.

In addition to football, Lehtonen also played bandy for HJK Helsinki and won the Finnish championship in this sport in 1937. Lehtonen also played handball (also for the HJK) and basketball (for the Helsinki club Karhun Pojat ) first class.

Aatos Lehtonen was a trained sports coach and after his career lived in Hyvinkää , a town with a long railway tradition : Lehtonen himself worked for the Finnish railway from 1956 to 1977 . He also wrote columns for the Finnish sports newspaper Urheilulehti and translated football training books into Finnish .

successes

Soccer

• Finnish champion : 1936 and 1938
• Mestaruussarja top scorer: 1935, 1936, 1937, 1938, 1939

• Honorary member of the Finnish Football Association
• Induced into the Hall of Fame for Finnish Football in 1993

Bandy

• Finnish champion: 1937

Web links

• Aatos Lehtonen in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )
• Hall of Fame of the Finnish Football Museum
• Brief overview of the career Lehtonens (English)
• Report on Lehtonen's death on the HJK website