Fernando Riera

Fernando Riera
Fernando Riera as a player
Personnel
Surname	Fernando Riera Bauzá
birthday	June 27, 1920
place of birth	Santiago ,  Chile
date of death	September 23, 2010
Place of death	Santiago ,  Chile
position	attack
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1937-1938	Unión Española
1939-1950	Universidad Católica
1950-1952	Stade Reims	14 0(0)
1953	Deportivo Vasco
1953-1954	FC Rouen	33 0(5)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1942-1950	Chile	17 (4)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1954-1957	Belenenses Lisbon
1958–1962	Chile
1962-1963	Benfica Lisbon
1964-1965	Universidad Católica
1966	Nacional Montevideo
1966-1968	Benfica Lisbon
1968	Universidad Católica
1969-1970	Espanyol Barcelona
1971-1972	Boca Juniors
1972-1973	FC Porto
1973	Deportivo La Coruña
1974	Olympique Marseille
1974-1975	Sporting Lisbon
1975-1976	CF Monterrey
1977	CD Palestino
1977-1988	CF Monterrey
1978-1982	Universidad de Chile
1983-1984	Everton Viña del Mar
1985-1988	Universidad de Chile
1988-1989	CF Monterrey
1 Only league games are given.

Fernando Riera Bauzá (born June 27, 1920 in Santiago , † September 23, 2010 ibid) was a Chilean football player and coach . Already very successful as an active player and a World Cup participant from 1950, he coached numerous club teams as well as the national team of his home country at the 1962 World Cup in his own country and led them to third place.

Player career

Club career

Fernando Riera was born on June 27, 1920 in the Chilean capital Santiago . Since his youth he played football for the local club Unión Española . Due to the origins of his parents, who were also immigrants from Spain , Riera fit perfectly into the association, which was founded by Spanish immigrants in 1897 . After visiting the youth department of Unión Española, he made his debut at the club in 1937 at the age of seventeen in the first team. There he acted in attack until 1938 before he left his hometown club and joined the city rivals CD Universidad Católica , which was not as successful then as it is today. Fernando Riera was on the pitch for Universidad Católica for twelve years between 1939 and 1950 and was there when the club from the municipality of Las Condes in eastern Santiago won the Chilean football championship for the first time in club history in 1949. In the Primera División , the team of coach Alberto Buccicardi finished in first place with a lead of four points over the Santiago Wanderers after the end of all game days .

This was Fernando Riera's greatest success in his career as an active football player at club level. Just a year later, in the summer of 1950 shortly after the end of the World Cup in Brazil , the now 30-year-old striker signed a contract with the French first division club Stade Reims . In Reims , a large team was just being set up, which in 1949 had won the club's first championship in the club's history. With Fernando Riera in the team, this title win should not be repeated. In the playing years 1950/51 and 1951/52 Reims got only two fourth places in the table under the new and later successful coach Albert Batteux . It was not until 1953 that they became champions again, after which the great dominance of French football and European successes began in the 1950s. But Fernando Riera was no longer playing at Stade Reims, he left the club at the end of 1952 to sign a new contract with Deportivo Vasco in Venezuela's capital, Caracas . There the Chilean kicked the ball for six months before returning to France . As a result, Riera played another year for FC Rouen , then represented in Division 2 , before he ended his football career in 1954 at the age of 34.

National team

Between 1942 and his move to France in 1950, Fernando Riera made a total of seventeen international matches for the Chilean national football team . He got four goals. He was appointed to the South American squad for the 1950 World Cup in Brazil by national coach Arturo Bucciardi . In the tournament, however, Riera was only used in one game, namely in the long worthless final group game against the United States , which Chile won 5-2. Riera stepped into the interim 2-0 in the 32nd minute of the game. Before that, however, the Chilean selection had already lost 2-0 to England and Spain , so that the final victory against the USA did not change anything about the elimination after the preliminary rounds. The game against the USA was also Fernando Riera's last international game for his home country, after his move to France he was no longer considered for the national team.

Coaching career

Belenenses and WM 1962

In the summer of 1954 Fernando Riera, who was still completely inexperienced as a coach and had just finished his playing career at FC Rouen, became the new coach of the Portuguese first division club Belenenses Lisbon , succeeding Humberto Buchelli . In his first season, Riera led his team to second place in the Primeira Liga , tied with first-placed city rivals Benfica . Only the worse goal difference separated Belenenses from the second championship in the club's history. The following year, the club was third behind FC Porto and Benfica. Fernando Riera achieved the same placement in his third season as the person in charge of the Belenenses Lisbon sidelines. After the end of the Primeira Liga in 1956/57 Fernando Riera resigned as coach at Belenenses, his successor was the Argentine and later world class coach Helenio Herrera .

Riera himself took over the office of Chilean national coach from Ladislao Pakozdi , under whose aegis Chile had already missed qualifying for the 1958 World Cup in Sweden prematurely. The Chilean association was faced with a completely different responsibility, namely hosting the 1962 World Cup . For this, the national team had to be made socially acceptable again, which also succeeded with the commitment of Riera, which was quite successful in Europe. Automatically qualified as the host for the finals, the Chilean selection around star striker Leonel Sánchez , midfielder Eladio Rojas and defensive strategist Luis Eyzaguirre played a tournament that was not considered possible at the World Cup. In the preliminary round, the two-time world champion Italy was sensationally left behind. However, the clash between the two national teams turned into the ingloriously famous so-called Battle of Santiago , which was fought with great brutality on both sides, but in the course of which only two Italian players were sent off. In the end, Chile won the game 2-0 and qualified early for the quarter-finals after beating World Cup newcomers Bulgaria . The defeat in the last group game against the Federal Republic of Germany did not change anything. Fernando Riera's team met the Soviet Union in the quarter-finals and were once again underdogs. Nevertheless, the team was able to achieve the only one in the round of the last four teams with a hard-fought 2-1 success, which was the greatest success ever in the history of the Chilean national football team. In the semifinals, however, Chile lost 4-2 to the defending champions from Brazil despite a good performance and missed a possible final. For the Chilean selection, the game for third place against Yugoslavia remained , which was won 1-0 by a goal by Eladio Rojas in the last minute of the game. The Chilean national team thus secured third place at the World Cup in their own country, which can generally be regarded as a great success. The game for third place was also the last match for Fernando Riera as national coach of his home country, he resigned after the end of the successful World Cup as the maker of what is probably the greatest success of a Chilean national team, his successor in office was Luis Álamos .

Success with Benfica

After his resignation as Chilean national coach, Fernando Riera returned to Portugal in the same summer to train the record champions Benfica Lisbon in succession to the successful Hungarian coach Béla Guttmann . In a first term of office from 1962 to 1963, Riera stood on the sidelines of Benfica and led the club by taking first place in the Primeira Divisão with six points ahead of FC Porto to win the championship, after only third place under Guttmann last year was. Benfica won 23 out of 26 league games, only two draws and one defeat at the end of the season. Internationally, however, Riera could not build on the successes under Béla Guttmann. After Benfica had defeated Real Madrid 5-3 in the last game under the auspices of Hungary and thus brought the European Cup to Lisbon for the second time in a row , the new coach from Chile pushed into the final again, but was able to do so however not decide for yourself. Despite the 1-0 lead by Eusébio , Benfica lost 2-1 to Italian representatives AC Milan in the final in London in the 1962/63 European Cup . This lost final was probably the undoing of Fernando Riera at Benfica Lisbon, he had to vacate the coaching post for the new season, his successor was the Hungarian veteran coach Lajos Czeizler .

Fernando Riera subsequently returned to his Chilean homeland and trained for two seasons from 1964 to 1965 at Universidad Católica, where he had a long contract as an active player. However, there were no noteworthy successes. In 1966 Riera was coach of the Uruguayan first division club Nacional Montevideo for a year , but here too no triumph in the championship could be recorded. In the summer of 1966 Riera left Montevideo and returned to his old place of work, Benfica Lisbon. In his first season back at Benfica, Riera led his team again to win the Portuguese football championship. This time the first place in the top division was occupied with a lead of three points over the surprise second Académica de Coimbra . After the end of this season, Fernando Riera's second term at Benfica ended, he was replaced by Fernando Cabrita for the new season .

Further trainer stations

In 1968 Fernando Riera coached his old club Universidad Católica again for a season, but this was not crowned with great success. A year later he returned to Europe and took over the coaching position at Espanyol Barcelona in the Spanish Segunda División . With the traditional club, Riera rose as third in the 1969/70 season with two points ahead of the first non-promotion place, occupied by Betis Sevilla , back on in the Primera División . Despite the rise, he was then replaced as coach by the Czechoslovak Ferdinand Daučík .

Riera then moved back to South America, where he coached the Boca Juniors in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires in 1971 and 1972 , but a championship did not jump out. In the course of the first division season in 1972 Fernando Riera resigned from Boca Juniors and took over the vacant coaching post at FC Porto , where he was again only under contract for one year and no particular successes were to be celebrated. In 1973 and 1974, the Chilean coached Deportivo La Coruña in Spain and Olympique Marseille in France for a short time .

After a year of service with Sporting Lisbon , Fernando Riera finally left European football in 1975 and spent the rest of his career in Latin and South America. First he coached the Mexican first division club CF Monterrey for two years from 1975 to 1976 before returning to Chile to CD Palestino in 1977 . With the traditional club, Riera won the Copa Chile in the 1977 season with a final victory over Unión Española and was able to defend the title after Palestino had also been successful under Riera's predecessor in the previous event two years earlier. After this title, the coach returned to Monterrey and worked there for another two years. From 1978 he was responsible for the sporting fortunes of CF Universidad de Chile . At that time, however, the club went through a largely unsuccessful phase, so that Fernando Riera's greatest success of this five-year activity was winning the Copa Chile 1979, where Universidad de Chile was able to prevail in the final with 2: 1 over record champions CSD Colo-Colo . Riera remained the coach of Universidad until 1982 and then coached the Everton de Viña del Mar CD in the 1983 and 1984 seasons . With this club, too, Riera was able to win the Chilean football cup, in the 1984 edition, Universidad Católica was defeated with a clear 3-0 in the final. For the 1985 season Riera returned to Universidad de Chile, where he was on the sidelines for four more years until 1988. In the summer of 1988 he returned to Monterrey for the second time for another year, where Fernando Riera's long coaching career finally ended in the summer of 1989 at the age of 69.

After that, he remained an expert in football and was widely regarded as one of the greatest Chilean football coaches. His achievements have been honored many times, especially in relation to the soccer World Cup in 1962 when he reached third place, which is still the greatest success of Chilean soccer today. Fernando Riera lived in his hometown of Santiago, where he died on September 23, 2010 at the age of 90.

successes

As a player

• Chilean championship : 1 ×

1949 with Universidad Católica

As a trainer

• Portuguese championship : 2 ×

1962/63 and 1966/67 with Benfica Lisbon

• Copa Chile : 3 ×

1977 with CD Palestino

1979 with Universidad de Chile

1984 with Everton Viña del Mar

Web links

• Fernando Riera in the database of weltfussball.de
• Biography of Fernando Rieras
• Biography and dates of Riera
• Information about the actor