Dieter Leuschner

Dieter Leuschner (born November 2, 1947 ) is a former German soccer player. For FC Karl-Marx-Stadt and Sachsenring Zwickau he played in the GDR Oberliga , the top division of the German Football Association . He won the GDR Cup in 1975 with Sachsenring Zwickau , and is also a multiple GDR junior national player.

Career

Leuschner first drew attention to himself as a national player in the junior national team throughout the GDR. There the player from the West Saxon top club FC Karl-Marx-Stadt was used for the first time on September 29, 1965 in the encounter GDR - Romania (0-1) as a half-right striker. In total, Leuschner played eight international junior matches by 1966, followed by an international match with the youth national team in 1970. In the summer of 1967, Leuschner had to interrupt his football career for several months after breaking a cervical vertebra and shoulder joint in a car accident.

His start in the GDR league took place on September 14, 1968. In the match on the 5th match day of the 1968/69 season 1. FC Union - Berlin - FC Karl-Marx-Stadt (1: 2) he was substituted on in the 62nd minute. In his first league season, Leuschner was used seven times, but only once for the full 90 minutes as a central midfielder. He was in the starting line-up in a total of three games.

At the beginning of the 1969/70 season, Leuschner moved to the league rivals and district rivals Sachsenring Zwickau. The Zwickau had to replace the eliminated player Erwin Erdmann and the drafted Günter Lippmann for military service , and so Leuschner came from the beginning of the season in the league team, with which he immediately completed all 26 season point games as a variable midfielder. In the 1970/71 season he also played the first ten point games in full, but was then drafted into military service for 18 months in November 1970. In the summer of 1972, Leuschner returned to the Zwickau team, was immediately a regular in midfield and, with four goals, was one of the most successful Sachsenring goal scorers together with Gerd Schellenberg. With the beginning of the 1973/74 season, Leuschner found his standard position on the right side of midfield for several years.

At the end of the 1974/75 season, Leuschner won the only title of his football career worth mentioning. Sachsenring Zwickau had reached the final of the GDR soccer cup for the fourth time in its history. On the way there, Leuschner had been used in all seven cup games and stood as a right midfielder on June 14, 1975 in the cup final against Dynamo Dresden. However , he only had an eleven-minute part in the Zwickau's surprising victory after a 4-3 win on penalties because he had to leave the field after a short time due to a knee injury. Leuschner was all the more effective in the subsequent games in the 1975/76 European Cup season . Unexpectedly, the Zwickau advanced to the semi-finals after they had thrown the favorite teams of Fiorentina and Celtic Glasgow from the competition. Only the RSC Anderlecht put an end to the flight with 3-0 and 2-0. Leuschner was involved in all eight European Cup games.

After his cup injury in 1975 Leuschner returned to the top division team of Zwickau in late September 1975 and came in the 1975/76 season to 19 point games. In the following season Leuschner completed his last league games. The first half of 1976 was marked by several failures and part-time assignments for the now 29-year-old. In the second half of 1977 he only came in three league point games, which he never played through the full distance. His last league use took place on March 5, 1975. In the game Dynamo Dresden - Sachsenring (5: 2) he was once again as a central midfielder in the starting line-up, in the 88th minute he was taken off the field.

Leuschner had played 138 league games for Sachsenring Zwickau and scored 21 goals as a midfielder. With his league appearances in Karl-Marx-Stadt, he has a record of 145 top division games with 22 goals.

literature

• Hanns Leske : Encyclopedia of GDR football . Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89533-556-3 .
• Andreas Baingo, Michael Horn: The History of the GDR Oberliga. Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89533-428-6 .
• Uwe Nuttelmann (Ed.): GDR Oberliga. 1962-1991. Self-published, Jade 2007, ISBN 978-3-930814-33-6 .