Eberhard Franz

Eberhard Franz (born October 17, 1935 in Königsfeld / Silesia) was a soccer player in Zwickau . For the company sports association (BSG) Motor Zwickau , he played in the GDR Oberliga , the highest East German soccer class. With Motor Zwickau, Franz won the cup in 1963.

Eberhard Franz played for Motor Zwickau for the first time in the East German league in the 1956 season, two years later than his brother Reinhard Franz, who was one year older . The Zwickauers had become the first East German soccer champion in 1948 as SG Planitz and first GDR champion in 1950 under the name Horch Zwickau, and since then they have always played in the major league. Before Franz's first league season, they were the best BSG team in the league, in fifth place. In the first seasons with the participation of Eberhard Franz, Motor Zwickau was no longer able to achieve this good position; it was not until 1960 that the Zwickau team were able to successfully return to fourth place.

Franz celebrated his greatest football success at the age of 27 at the end of the 1962/63 season. Although he had only been used eight times in the previous 25 Bundesliga match days, he was with Motor Zwickau as a right winger in the final of the GDR soccer cup on May 1, 1963 and won the cup with his team after a 3-0 victory over Chemie Zeitz .

In the following season, Franz was only able to play regularly in the top division team in the first half of the season apart from three failures. He was also in Zwickau's two European Cup games against MTK Budapest (1-0, 0-2). In the second half of the season he only played four league games, as well as in the first half of the 1964/65 season. The point game of the 10th league round on November 25, 1964, Motor Zwickau - SC Karl-Marx-Stadt (1: 3), was Eberhard Franz's last first division game, which he played again as a half-left striker. In his nine years of league football, in which he was mostly overshadowed by his more successful brother Reinhard, Franz played 90 games in the top GDR football class and scored 14 goals.

After Franz retired from high-performance sport at the age of 30, he played for another four years for the BSG activist Karl Marx Zwickau or, after their merger with Motor Zwickau to form the BSG Sachsenring, in their second team from 1968.

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 .