Agenor Muniz

This article is about the Brazilian-Australian soccer player Agenor Muniz. For the Uruguayan football player, see Agenor Muñiz .

Agenor Muniz, 2016

Agenor de Oliveira Muniz (born June 24, 1949 in Sapucaia ( RJ )) is a former Brazilian-Australian football player . He originally played in Rio de Janeiro with CR Vasco da Gama . In 1971 he moved to Australia to the Hakoah Club with which he was to win two championship titles in the following years. He also played for Adelaide City - he won the cup with the club - and Pan-Hellenic . In 1975 he was naturalized and then played twenty times for Australia until 1979 .

Life

In 1966, Agenor Muniz - born as one of eleven siblings in Sapucaia in the hinterland of the state of Rio de Janeiro on the border with Minas Gerais - joined the youth of the top club CR Vasco da Gama at the age of seventeen . A year later he was accepted by the professionals. In the years to come, he did not manage to become part of the regular cast. Even on the historic day in the Maracanã Stadium on November 19, 1969, when FC Santos won 2-1 at Vasco and the legendary Pelé scored his thousandth goal in front of 165,000 spectators, he only defended the bench.

A film excerpt prompted the Hakoah Club in the Australian metropolis of Sydney , which sent a team formerly known as the Eastern Suburbs to the soccer competitions of the state of New South Wales , to sign midfielder Agenor Muniz along with four other Brazilians such as Luis de Melo and winger Hilton Silva for the game year 1971. At that time, the club's president was the later shopping mall billionaire (→ Westfield ) and founding head of the Football Federation Australia, Frank Lowy . In 1971 the Association of Jewish Immigrants, based in Bondi am Meer and dating back to 1939, became the premier of New South Wales. H. the club won the league part of the championship, but could not prevail in the play-offs , in which the best-placed clubs played off the ultimate champions. Hakoah also won the State Cup by beating the Croatian immigrants club from the south of the city, later Sydney United, 3-2 .

From 1973 to 1974 Muniz played for the Greek club, Pan-Hellenic , which in later years was renamed Sydney Olympic FC . There was little to gain there that year. On the contrary, a 7-1 defeat at home in Wentworth Park, which otherwise served as a venue for dog races, against the St. George-Budapest Club - with 1974 World Cup participants like Attila Abonyi and the German-born milkman Manfred Schaefer one of the top teams of that era - caused a stir. At the end of the 1973 season, Pan-Hellenic finished in a disappointing ninth place in the twelve united state league.

During a stay in Brazil, Agenor Muniz actually wanted to settle there again, although he would have had to take a compulsory break as a footballer, since at that time Brazilians who played abroad were only allowed to play for a Brazilian club after four years. The Australian Football Association, on the other hand, advised him to apply for Australian citizenship - to which he was entitled after two years of residency - and to play for the national team.

Agenor Muniz allowed himself to be naturalized and made his debut for the Australian national soccer team on August 6, 1975 in a 1-0 win in a friendly international soccer match in Melbourne against Red China . On February 16, 1977 he scored his only goal for the so-called Socceroos in a 1-1 draw in Sydney against Israel . In the games that failed to qualify for the 1978 World Cup , however, he was only used in the first game, a 3-1 win against New Zealand in Sydney at the end of March 1977. On June 13, 1979 he came in the 60th minute as a substitute in a 0-1 defeat in the first game under the new national coach Rudi Gutendorf in a friendly game in Auckland again against New Zealand to his last of 20 official internationals in which he scored a goal scored. In the colors of Australia, green and gold, he played in a total of 18 other unofficial games, for example against various club teams such as SL Benfica , Red Star and Partizan Belgrade . On a European tour he was defeated by Australia in November 1976 to Hamburger SV 1: 2 and played 1: 1 against the former second division club KSV Baunatal .

At club level, Muniz was back in the service of the Hakoah Club from March 1974, after disputes about the transfer fee, and won the New South Wales Premiership with the "Sleeping Giant of Sydney Football" that same year alongside Ray Baartz and Jimmy Mackay the play-offs were again not enough to win the national championship. Also in the coming seasons Hakoah occupied places in the upper table region. In 1976 he won the New South Wales State League Cup with Hakoah by beating Croatia in the final .

In April 1977 Muniz played with Sydney City the first five games in the first play of the National Soccer League , which was named after a sponsor Philips Soccer League , and scored two goals. After a falling out with coach Gerry Chaldi , he joined Adelaide City FC , the former Juventus club of Italian immigrants, in May 1977 , where he made his debut on matchday seven with a goal. Sydney City was Australia's first champion at the end of the season, Adelaide City fourth. Muniz won 1979 with Adelaide on the side of the scoring Scottish national player John "Dixie" Deans , the "Peter Pan of Soccer", by a 3-2 final victory over St. George the Cup of Australia . In 1980, he finished second behind the Scottish Brisbane Lions SC defender Jim Hermiston , a Queensland police officer who previously won the Scottish Cup with Aberdeen FC in the vote for Australia's Footballer of the Year .

From February 1981 he played again for Hakoah and won the Australian championship for the second time in the same year with the club, which was now called Sydney City and liked to be nicknamed "Slickers". After that he played for some time in the lowlands of New South Wales state football. In 1983 he was named New South Wales Footballer of the Year . Over the years he still trained here and there in the lower class.

He remained a factotum of the Brazilian community in Sydney and was a co-founder of the Canarinhos ' every Sunday recreational game , the "Canary Yellow ", which originally started in 1972 in Moore Park and since 1989 in Centennial Park . Their regular place there on Dickens Drive is also entered on official maps as the "Brazilian Field" these days. In 2011, the Canarinhos held the Les Murray Cup for recreational teams for the second time in honor of Australia's televised round leather football guru. The press still likes to quote him when, for example, he demands the appointment of world champion coach Felipe Scolari as the Australian national coach.

Stations

• 1968 to 1971: CR Vasco da Gama
• 1971 to 1973: Hakoah Sydney
• 1973 to 1974: Pan Hellenic Soccer Club
• 1974 to 1977: Hakoah Sydney
• 1977: Sydney City FC
• 1977 to 1981: Adelaide City FC
• 1981: Hakoah Sydney

Web links

• Ex-jogador vascaíno já defendeu a seleção australiana , SuperVasco, October 18, 2006.
• The National Soccer League , OzFootball (with line-ups of the individual seasons), as of July 20, 2012.
• The Australian National Men's Football Team: Caps and Captains OzFootball, (PDF, approx. 600 kB), as of July 20, 2012.

Individual evidence

1. ^ Brian Mossop: Passports tell story , Sydney Morning Herald , Aug 13, 1976, p. 7.
2. ^ Brian Mossop: Lullaby soccer as Hakoah and United draw 1-1 , Sydney Morning Herald, April 1, 1974, p. 10.
3. ^ Socceroo moves , The Age , May 4, 1977, p. 16.
4. ↑ Tony Hammond: Soccer's Peter Pan sinks Sydney City , Sydney Morning Herald, May 20, 1979, p. 14
5. ↑ Laurie Schwab: Scot is soccer's top man , The Age, October 21, 1980, p. 23.
6. ^ II Les Murray Cup  ( page no longer available , search in web archives ), Pablito Australia, December 5, 2011.