Dieter Lindner (soccer player)

Dieter Lindner (born June 11, 1939 in Breslau ) is a former German football player and later-an official. As a player for Eintracht Frankfurt , from 1957 to 1963 he played 132 league games with 49 goals in what was then the first-class soccer league south and 189 games with five goals in the Bundesliga from 1963 to 1971. In the 1958/59 season he won the German championship with his club and in 1960 he stood with Eintracht in the final of the European Cup .

career

Player, until 1971

Oberliga Süd, 1957 to 1963

Lindner played for Eintracht Frankfurt throughout his entire playing activity - youth and senior level. Already at the age of 17, the talented offensive youth player was used in the top division squad of Eintracht. He made his debut on February 10, 1957 in a 3-1 away win at Jahn Regensburg in the Oberliga Süd. Under coach Adolf Patek he played the center forward role and brought his team 1-0 lead in the 60th minute of the game. In his first regular senior round, 1957/58, the young hopefuls made 22 league appearances and scored eight goals. In the 1958/59 season he was able to celebrate the championship in the Oberliga Süd under coach Paul Oßwald and at the side of teammates like Richard Kreß , Istvan Sztani , Ekkehard Feigenspan and playmaker Alfred Pfaff . In 22 league games, the offensive player, who can be used variably in the attack, scored five goals. The team from Riederwald prevailed with two points ahead of local rivals Kickers Offenbach as runner-up and six points ahead of 1. FC Nürnberg as third in the table. In the final round, the attacker, who celebrated his 20th birthday on June 11th, belonged to the Eintracht-Elf, who confidently with 12-0 points and a goal difference of 26:11 points against the rivals Werder Bremen, FK Pirmasens and 1. FC Köln made it into the final. The junior player had scored two goals in the six group games. The final of the German soccer championship 1959 took place on June 28th in the Berlin Olympic Stadium against South Vice Kickers Offenbach. In a dramatic game, Eintracht prevailed with 5: 3 goals after extra time and brought the championship trophy to Frankfurt. “The 1959 final will go down in German football history as one of the most breathtaking,” enthused Friedebert Becker in “Kicker”, as Greens recorded in his documentary on the German championship.

In the year after winning the German championship in 1959/60 , Eintracht achieved third place in the south behind champions Karlsruher SC and Kickers Offenbach. Personally, Lindner achieved his best league record with 29 appearances and 16 goals. The new center forward Erwin Stein led the internal goalscorer list before him with 24 goals and on October 3, 1959 he played in the national B team at the international match in Constance against Switzerland . He was substituted on for his former teammate Feigenspan on the right wing and acted alongside his Eintracht colleagues Friedel Lutz and Dieter Stinka .

The real highlight, however, were the games in the European Cup . The title holder of the DFB prevailed against Young Boys Bern, Wiener Sportclub and in the semifinals against Scotland's champions Glasgow Rangers and moved into the final on May 18, 1960 in Glasgow against the series winner Real Madrid . In the two games against the Scottish professionals in the semifinals, Lindner, who was still 20 years old, was in great shape. After the 6-1 home win on April 13, 1960, the press noted: “Dieter Lindner, who was only 20 years old, crowned his strongest performance so far in the Adler jersey with a header from Weilbächer's free kick and a close-range goal to make it 5: 1 after passport from Alfred Pfaff ”. In an interview with Jörg Heinisch, Lindner commented on the first leg against Rangers: “The first leg against Glasgow was one of the biggest games I've played. I scored two goals and provided two wonderful assists ”. He was also one of Eintracht's strongest players in the second leg, won 6: 3 goals on May 5th at Ibrox Park. "After just six minutes, Lindner's dream goal (his 23-meter hammer hit the top left corner) made it clear that the Hessians had not come to just defend their lead in their own penalty area." In the final in front of 127,621 spectators in Hampden Park, however, he and his Eintracht colleagues had to acknowledge the playful superiority of Real in the 7-3 success of the "White Ballet". Against the individual class, especially the two stars Alfredo di Stefano (3 goals) and Ferenc Puskás (4 goals), the excellent camaraderie of the German champions could not contribute to the success. In addition, Real was also well prepared for Eintracht by watching the game. Lindner is quoted in Heinisch with the following statement:

“ They were already well adjusted to us. I was a pretty good header player back then and scored a lot of goals with my head. And they knew our strengths and weaknesses. I played against the Zarraga. With every corner kick or free kick when he was standing next to me, he tugged at my jersey - very easily - nobody noticed. In that moment it's over - I can't get up, especially not at the right time. When we beat Real Madrid 1-0 and hit the crossbar once, they should have seen di Stefano, who was the team's best footballer. How he ran across the square, from one gate to the other, like a dervish. And how he squeezed his teammates together. That was incredible. I've never experienced that from a team captain: It was clear how they turned up. That was great! "

In the rounds of 1960/61 and 1961/62 Lindner reached the runner-up in the southern league with the eagle bearers and thus moved into the final round of the German championship two more times. Equal on points with Borussia Dortmund - both 7: 5 points - Eintracht failed to make it into the final in 1961 and in the year of the 1962 World Cup in Chile, Lindner and colleagues failed at the later German champions 1. FC Köln. In a total of 16 finals, Lindner scored five goals from 1959 to 1962. With the fourth rank after the round 1962/63, the chapter Football Oberliga Süd ended. The Frankfurt home-grown has scored 49 goals for Eintracht in 132 league games. In addition to the finals and the European Cup in 1960, the one-month world tour in May / June 1962 with the stops Athens, Cairo, Bombay, Calcutta, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Tokyo, Hawai, San Francisco, Vancouver, Winnipeg, Toronto and New York belonged to the outstanding moments in Dieter Lindner's playing career.

Bundesliga, 1963 to 1971

Lindner is also a member of the group of players who, on August 24, 1963, were the active players in getting the newly created single-track top league up and running. Eintracht opened the Bundesliga with a 1-1 home draw against 1. FC Kaiserslautern. But now he was acting as an outside runner and together with Alfred Horn , Horst Trimhold and Wilhelm Huberts formed the “magic square” in the World Cup system that was still in use at the time . Frankfurt reached third place in the Bundesliga’s debut year - Lindner scored 29 games with two goals - and moved into the DFB Cup final on June 13, 1964 after successes against VfL Wolfsburg, KSV Hessen Kassel, FC Schalke 04 and Hertha BSC Stuttgart against south rivals TSV München 1860. The team from Riederwald lost the final against the Munich “Löwen” in the “Embers” of the Stuttgart Neckar Stadium with 0-2 goals and did not perform well. At Matheja, Lindner made the following statement:

“ We were knocked out standing. No strength. Nothing there. The decisive factor was that Munich was better prepared. They trained in the scorching heat at noon and were used to the high temperatures. We trained at six in the evening. Before the 1959 final against the Offenbacher Kickers, training was scheduled at three o'clock at noon. We looked different in the game. "

From the 1965/66 round, Elek Schwartz took over the training management at Eintracht and three new players joined the team in Jürgen Grabowski , Peter Kunter and Karl-Heinz Wirth . The former coach of Benfica Lisbon introduced the morning training and the modern 4-2-4 system in Hessen. Lindner moved into central defense at Schwartz and in the new coach's second season, 1966/67 , Eintracht played for months for the championship title. From the 18th to the 33rd matchday, Lindner and his teammates were in second place in the table. It was only when they lost 2-1 goals at 1860 Munich on matchday 34, June 3, 1967, that they fell back to fourth place. Lindner was only absent on one match day. At the same time, Lindner narrowly missed the second entry into a European final with Eintracht in the trade fair cup . After successes against Drumcondra Dublin, Hvidovre Copenhagen, Ferencvaros Budapest (with Florian Albert ), FC Burnley (Bellamy, Coates) the Schwartz protégés failed only in the semi-final second leg at Dinamo Zagreb. Despite a 3-0 defeat in the first leg in Frankfurt in front of a home crowd in Zagreb, the protégés of coach Branko Zebec made it into the final with a 4-0 win after extra time. The men around goalkeeper Zlatko Škorić , defensive boss Rudolf Belin and goal scorer Slaven Zambata won on August 30th / 6th. September in the two finals against Leeds United the cup. Eintracht formed on the defensive this season mainly with the players Peter Kunter (goalkeeper), in the back four with Fahrudin Jusufi , Lindner, Peter Blusch and Lothar Schämer and before that they played with the two midfielders Jürgen Friedrich and Wilhelm Huberts. Lindner had played all ten games in the trade fair cup.

After only three more missions in the 1969/70 round under young coach Erich Ribbeck , Dieter Lindner ended his playing career in the summer of 1970. After 17 match days of the 1970/71 round, Eintracht was in 18th place with 11:23 points and was faced with massive relegation to the Regionalliga Süd. Lindner was reactivated to consolidate the defensive and by the end of the round they had a balance of 17:11 points and with a total of 28:40 points were able to avoid relegation as 15th. The "eternal" eagle bearer came again to 15 Bundesliga games and also scored one goal. From 1963 to 1971 Lindner played in the Bundesliga with 189 league games and five goals.

With the game on January 8, 1969 in the trade fair cup against Atletico Bilbao, the Eintracht captain had ended his appearances after a total of 24 games with four goals in the European club competitions.

official

Lindner, who lives in Nieder-Erlenbach, was vice president of Eintracht in the 1980/81 season and its interim president from May 5 to October 2, 1996. He was also chairman of the supervisory board for many years.

He is an honorary member and honorary captain of Eintracht Frankfurt and a member of the board of the Eintracht Frankfurt Museum sponsoring association.

literature

• Ulrich Matheja: Schlappekicker and sky striker. The story of Eintracht Frankfurt. Publishing house Die Werkstatt. Göttingen 2004. ISBN 3-89533-427-8 .
• Matthias Kropp (ed.): Germany's great football teams, part 7: Eintracht Frankfurt . AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 1995, ISBN 3-928562-53-3 (AGON sport statistics; 14).
• Matthias Weinrich: Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 3: 35 years of the Bundesliga. Part 1. The founding years 1963–1975. Stories, pictures, constellations, tables. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 1998, ISBN 3-89784-132-0 .
• Matthias Kropp: Triumphs in the European Cup. All games of the German clubs since 1955 (= "AGON Sportverlag statistics." Volume 20). AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 1996, ISBN 3-928562-75-4 .
• Werner Skrentny (Ed.): When Morlock still met the moonlight. The history of the Oberliga Süd 1945–1963. Klartext, Essen 1993, ISBN 3-88474-055-5 .
• Hardy Grüne , Lorenz Knieriem: Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 8: Player Lexicon 1890–1963. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2006, ISBN 3-89784-148-7 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Hardy Greens: 100 Years of the German Championship. The history of football in Germany. Publishing house Die Werkstatt. Göttingen 2003. ISBN 3-89533-410-3 , p. 320.
2. ^ Matthias Weinrich: The European Cup. Volume 1: 1955 to 1974. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2007, ISBN 978-3-89784-252-6 , p. 65.
3. ↑ Jörg Heinisch: The game of the century. Eintracht Frankfurt and Real Madrid in the European championship 1960. AGON Sportverlag. Kassel 2007. ISBN 3-89784-248-3 , p. 40.
4. ^ Matthias Weinrich: The European Cup. Volume 1: 1955 to 1974. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2007, ISBN 978-3-89784-252-6 , p. 65.
5. ↑ Jörg Heinisch: The game of the century. Eintracht Frankfurt and Real Madrid in the European championship 1960. AGON Sportverlag. Kassel 2007. ISBN 3-89784-248-3 , pp. 39/40.
6. ↑ Ulrich Matheja: Schlappekicker and Himmelsstürmer. The story of Eintracht Frankfurt. P. 196/197.

Web links

• Lindner at eintracht-archiv.de