Franz Eckl

Franz Eckl (born January 11, 1896 , † November 19, 1966 ) was an Austrian football player and football coach who was part of the national team in the interwar period .

Club career

Eckl came from the offspring of First Vienna FC 1894 , where he played his way into the fighting team before his career was interrupted for four years by the First World War . After the end of the war he returned to the Döblingern, where he worked until 1922, apart from a detour into German-Bohemian football in the summer of 1919 when he played for the DFK Aussig . At Vienna Eckl was primarily used as a left winger and was able to achieve relegation three times in a row with the club after promotion to the top division.

In 1922 he moved to the second division SK Slovan Vienna , where promotion to the top division was made straight away. While the favorites initially moved in the lower regions of the table, the team was able to reach the final in the ÖFB Cup in 1924 , where they were only defeated 6-8 by the Wiener Amateur SV in extra time. Eckl played at Slovan in a series of storms with Rudolf Hanel and Antonín Bulla and in 1926 achieved the best final result in the club's history with sixth place. He then returned to Vienna for half a season, but played again for Slovan in the spring. At the end of 1928 he left the Czech club for good and joined the first division promoted SC Nicholson Vienna , where he stormed alongside Georg Waitz for two years .

At the beginning of 1931 Eckl moved to FC St. Gallen in Switzerland together with Ferdinand Wesely . While Wesely soon moved on to Basel, Eckl, who was also active as a player-coach at times, stayed with the club for a longer period of time, even when it was relegated to the second division in 1932. In 1935 he finally returned to the top division with the Eastern Swiss, where he also ended his active career.

National team

After Eckl had come to the selection of the German-Bohemian Association during his detour to Aussig, he was used for the first time in the national team shortly after his return to Vienna, when he was on the left in a 2: 3 against Hungary in November 1919 Wing played. Due to the competition on his regular position from Wesely and Gustav Wieser , however, he did not make it to the regular player, his appearances in the national dress were therefore only sporadic in the next few years. He scored his only goal in May 1926 in a 3-0 win against Hungary, before he played his seventh and last game for Austria against Belgium in 1928 . He was also used twice in the B selection and seven times in the Vienna city team.

Coaching career

Eckl had already made his first coaching experience during his active time in St. Gallen and after the end of his playing career he initially looked after FC Zurich . In 1937 he returned to Vienna, where he was coach of SC Austro Fiat and led the works club into the top division.

successes

• 1 × ÖFB Cup final: 1924
• 3 × Austrian second division champions: 1919, 1923 (as a player), 1938 (as a coach)
• 1 × Swiss second division champions: 1935
• 7 games and 1 goal for the Austrian national soccer team: 1919–1928