Axel Kruse

This article is about the soccer player. For the author of the same name, see Axel Kruse (author) .

Axel Kruse
Personnel
birthday	September 28, 1967
place of birth	Wolgast ,  GDR
size	179 cm
position	striker
Juniors
Years	station
1974-1976	Dynamo Wolgast
1976-1981	Motor Wolgast
1981-1985	Hansa Rostock
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1985-1989	Hansa Rostock	79 (14)
1989-1991	Hertha BSC	24 0(9)
1991-1993	Eintracht Frankfurt	54 (14)
1993-1996	VfB Stuttgart	64 (14)
1994	→  FC Basel  (loan)	4 0(2)
1996-1998	Hertha BSC	40 (15)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
	DDR U18
	DDR U19
1985	DDR U21	1 (0)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
2002-2007	Tasmania Gropiusstadt
1 Only league games are given.

Axel Kruse (born September 28, 1967 in Wolgast ) is a former German soccer and American football player.

Career

societies

Axel Kruse played for Dynamo Wolgast in his hometown between 1974 and 1976, before moving to BSG Motor Wolgast in 1976 . In 1981 he was discovered as a talent by Hansa Rostock and trained there with the later professional footballers Jens Dowe , Florian Weichert , Thomas Doll and Volker Röhrich in the club's youth boarding school. At the age of 18, Kruse moved into the club's professional squad for the 1985/86 season and quickly became a regular player.

As a Hansa Rostock player, he fled to West Germany on July 8, 1989 during an away game in Copenhagen with the help of friends. There he joined the then second division Hertha BSC , of which he was now a club member. However, FIFA initially did not give him a license to play , so Kruse was only allowed to play for the club from matchday 24. Nevertheless, he and Fred Klaus were Hertha’s best attacker with seven goals this season . In his first game on February 24, 1990 against MSV Duisburg , the striker made it 3-0. At the end of the season he rose to the top of the table with Hertha. In the Bundesliga he then gave his premiere in Germany's top division on August 9, 1990 on the opening day of the game against FC St. Pauli . Until the winter break, Kruse and his team could only win once; on the 11th matchday he scored against Eintracht Frankfurt for a 1-0 win.

In the winter of the 1990/91 season, the striker moved to Eintracht Frankfurt , which was in the top tier of the league at the time. With Anthony Yeboah , Lothar Sippel and Janusz Turowski, the competition in Frankfurt was tough , but Kruse prevailed and scored three goals in twelve games. The following year, the ex-Rostock had a hard time. Behind Yeboah, Sippel and the Eintracht returnee Jørn Andersen , he was only striker number four. At the end of the season, Eintracht missed the championship due to a defeat on the last match day against Hansa Rostock and fell back to third place. Even in the 1992/93 season, Kruse did not succeed in establishing himself as a regular. Although he completed the fourth-most of his team with 28 missions, he was substituted in or out 18 times. For this reason he moved to league rivals VfB Stuttgart after the end of the season .

In 1993 he had a black first year near Stuttgart. He was only used twice over the full 90 minutes of a game and failed to score. In April, the VfB managers, the former East German youth international decided to FC Basel to borrow after Kruse previous ten weeks for an assault in a German Cup game against 1. FC Kaiserslautern against referee Hans-Joachim Osmers was blocked . In the summer of 1994 Kruse returned to VfB and was there in the 1994/95 season together with Giovane Elber with eight goals, the team's second-best goalscorer. Only Fredi Bobic was five goals better. After another year, in which he only came on as a substitute, he moved again to Hertha BSC in 1996.

There Kruse immediately became the team's captain. As in 1989, the club made it to the Bundesliga with him in 1996/97; with 15 hits, he was by far the best attacker in Berlin. In the Bundesliga he then played eleven games for Berlin; his last professional game against TSV 1860 Munich took place on the 14th matchday , when he was substituted on for Alphonse Tchami in the 41st minute .

In 1998 he had to end his football career because of a knee injury. The reason for the end of his career was a collision on October 4, 1997 with goalkeeper Jens Lehmann from FC Schalke 04 ; Kruse, who then passed out, suffered a concussion and tore his patellar tendon .

National team

In his youth, Axel Kruse played eleven U17, fifteen U18 and six U19 games as well as one U21 game for the GDR. In 1986 he also became European A-Junior Champion . In September 1992 Kruse was invited by national coach Berti Vogts to a viewing course for the national team at the Wedau sports school. However , there was no use in the national team, in which Kruse also stayed at the preliminary farewell game for Rudi Völler in Dresden in October 1992.

After an active football career

Kruse started a new beginning comparable to Manfred Burgsmüller and became an American footballer at Berlin Thunder . From 1999 to 2003 he scored 130 points as a kicker , was a top scorer and won two World Bowl titles with the team .

Until the summer of 2007 he was employed as head coach at Tasmania Gropiusstadt in the Verbandsliga Berlin, the successor club of SC Tasmania 1900 Berlin , the club that was a member of the Bundesliga for one year in 1965/66 and was the worst team ever in the Bundesliga. History went down.

He later worked as a host of his own sports program on television. Kruse is currently managing director of the film and television production company farbfilm media in Berlin , he is also an expert and reporter for Sport1 and was total for the pay-TV offer of Telekom LIGA! active.

successes

• Champion of the 2nd Bundesliga with Hertha BSC : 1990
• U-18 European Champion 1986 with the GDR

Web links

• Literature by and about Axel Kruse in the catalog of the German National Library
• Axel Kruse in the database of fussballdaten.de
• Axel Kruse in the database of weltfussball.de
• Axel Kruse in the Football Database (American Football)
• Image on dfb.de
• Axel Kruse, Northern Lights from Berlin - Legends on the website of FC Hansa Rostock
• “I was wanted by the police” - Kruses interview with Der Spiegel

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hertha BSC: The squad 1989/1990 on fussballdaten.de ( Memento from January 2, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Match statistics MSV Duisburg - Hertha BSC 0: 3 (0: 0) from February 24, 1990 on fussballdaten.de
3. ↑ Match statistics Hertha BSC - FC St. Pauli 1: 2 (1: 0) from August 9, 1990 on fussballdaten.de
4. ↑ Match statistics Hertha BSC - Eintracht Frankfurt 1: 0 (1: 0) from October 20, 1990 on fussballdaten.de
5. ↑ Eintracht Frankfurt: The 1990/1991 squad on fussballdaten.de ( Memento from February 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ Eintracht Frankfurt: The 1992/1993 squad on fussballdaten.de ( Memento from March 9, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
7. ^ The games of the Bundesliga 1992/1993 for Eintracht Frankfurt on fussballdaten.de
8. ↑ Foul, insult, headbutt: bans in football
9. ^ VfB Stuttgart: The roster 1994/1995 on fussballdaten.de ( Memento from February 28, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
10. ↑ Match statistics Hertha BSC - TSV 1860 Munich 2: 0 (2: 0) from November 8, 1997 on fussballdaten.de
11. ↑ Axel Kruse leaves from August 15, 1998 on tagesspiegel.de
12. ^ "Woe if Berti asks for the national team", Sport-Bild from February 3, 1993, p. 20.