Adrian Alston

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Adrian Alston (born February 6, 1949 in Preston , England ) is a former Australian football player and coach. The striker played in the English first division with Luton Town FC and in the heyday of the North American Soccer League with the Tampa Bay Rowdies . However, he drew lasting attention to himself at the 1974 World Cup in Germany. When Australia played for the first time in the finals , he was one of the most prominent players on the team from the fifth continent.

Life

Adrian "Noddy" Alston played in the offspring of the English club Preston North End FC before he was brought to Australia in 1967 by South Coast United in Wollongong on the south coast of New South Wales . He came back in July 1969 in Sydney in a 1-0 win against Greece for his first appearance for the Australian national football team .

In the qualifying rounds for the Football World Cups in 1970 and 1974 , he proved to be the most dangerous Australian striker. At the finals of the 1974 World Cup , the team of amateurs trained by Rale Rašić was eliminated after the preliminary round without having scored a goal. The dribbling Alston, in the Australian 4-5-1 system, the only attacking tip, had the greatest chance in the second group game in the 3-0 defeat against Germany when he in the second half, after Georg Schwarzenbeck and Franz Beckenbauer - with whom he exchanged the shirt after the game - left behind, but just missed the goal in front of goalkeeper Sepp Maier . Before the game, national coach Helmut Schön said "we have nothing to fear with Australia, except Adrian Alston".

After the tournament , Alston , who had meanwhile reached Safeway United via the St. George Budapest Club in Sydney , had offers from the Bundesliga from Hamburg , Hertha BSC and Eintracht Frankfurt , but preferred the English first division promoted Luton Town FC ; a decision that he regretted in retrospect. After only one season in which he scored eight goals in 29 games - he was next to Ron Futcher Luton's top scorer - he was relegated with the club. He then played for third division Cardiff City FC with whom he won the Cup of Wales after results of 3: 3 and 3: 2 against Hereford United and also rose to the second division. He became the first Cardiff player to score a hat trick in an English Cup game after World War II . In this 6-2 won game against Exeter City FC , he convinced, as well as overall in the promotion year. In the European Cup Winners' Cup , he became the first Australian to score a goal in a European club competition the following season. In the second division he was no longer able to impress.

In 1977 he moved to the North American Soccer League , where many old stars of that era such as Pelé , Franz Beckenbauer and Johan Cruyff once again earned good money. In the 1977 NASL season, he scored seven goals in 17 games for the Tampa Bay Rowdies . After the season in the USA, he played again at the end of the year in Australia for Canberra City SC before he returned to the rowdies in 1978. Persistent knee problems caused a career end after only two more games with one goal. Over a period of six months he tried again to play at his home club Preston North End, but then decided to go back to Australia.

In November 1977 he came to Tehran in a 1-0 defeat in a World Cup qualifier against Iran for his last appearance in the green and gold of the Australian national team, for which he promoted the ball seven times in the opponent's goal in 43 games.

After his soccer career, he worked professionally with mentally handicapped children. Between 1997 and 2004 he also coached the Port Kembla team at Wollongong in the regional Illawarra Premier League . In 2004/05, "Noddy" Alston coached the Wollongong City team in the New South Wales State League - and set himself up once again.

successes

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alston: The man Schoen feared ( Memento of December 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), FIFA .com, (accessed on April 11, 2009)
  2. ↑ Dave Litterer: Top International Stars in the NASL, 1967-1984 - Part 1: Player Biographies, AH ( November 26, 2010 memento in the Internet Archive ) , American Soccer History Archives, January 29, 2005
  3. ↑ Information on international matches according to Adrian Alston , 11v11.com - Official Website of the Association of Football Statisticians, minus one game against an Irish league selection. Roberto Mamrud: Australia - Record International Players , Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation , April 6, 2002. seems to ignore four games after 1974.
personal data
SURNAME Alston, Adrian
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Australian soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Preston , England