Fritz Apel

Fritz Apel (born February 18, 1925 - March 22, 2010 ) was a German soccer player . The striker played 199 games in the Oberliga Nord from 1947 to 1957 for the clubs SV Arminia Hannover and VfL Wolfsburg , scoring 117 goals.

career

Arminia Hannover, 1947 to 1955

After the Second World War, Arminia Hannover, the “blue boys” from Bischofshol , developed into another point of contact for Berlin players. In addition to goalkeeper Werner Grabitz and outside runner Clemens Heyduck , attacking player Fritz “Bollo” Apel also found his way to the Lower Saxony metropolis via the stations Germania Halberstadt, SG Babelsberg and SG Zehlendorf.

From the 1948/49 season - Georg Knöpfle was the coach and the later "World Champion" Josef Posipal strengthened the Arminen team - "Bollo" Apel always scored over ten goals per round in seven rounds, and that with a team that was not one of the top teams North counted. When Hamburger SV and ex-Arminen Posipal competed in the stadium on Bischofsholer Damm in front of 8,000 spectators on October 23, 1949 , the game ended goalless 0-0, the two rows of defenses successfully prevailed against the opposing storm formations. In the first competition of the national cup after the Second World War, 1949/50, the entire elite of German football is still at the start. The contract footballers of the league clubs and the associations of the eastern zone take part. "Bollo" Apel storms in the Lower Saxony selection in the second round against Südwürttemberg and in the semi-final game on January 22nd, 1950 in Munich against Bayern alongside the Osnabrücker Gehmlich, Haferkamp and Vetter. Bayern entered the final with a 6-2 win, where the men for Streitle and Schade also prevailed against the Palatinate. In the 1950/51 round, attacker Apel exceeded the 20 mark for the first time and scored 21 goals in 30 league games. Trainer Harald Reinhardt relied on the high-performance runner row with Kurt Scheibe , Robert Pluta and Clemens Heyduck and in the attack on the goal scorers Apel and Robert Bertram . Nevertheless, the "blues" only came in 13th. But “Bollo” came in behind the record man Herbert Wojtkowiak with 40 goals, “Addi” Vetter (30), Günther Schlegel (28), Edmund Adamkiewicz (26) and Karl-Heinz Preuße (23) together with Werner Kruppa (21) ranked sixth. HSV won the championship with a goal difference of 113: 54 goals (with Wojtkowiak, Adamkiewicz and Rohrberg), ahead of runner-up St. Pauli (Kruppa), who like fourth place in the table VfL Osnabrück (Vetter) with 84 goals, the most goals after HSV could achieve in the north. Arminia's scoring of 63 hits led to the final placement in the lower midfield thanks to the 69 received. In this round, “Bollo” Apel scored three goals each in the three games against Altona 93, Eintracht Osnabrück and SV Itzehoe.

In 1954, the year of the soccer world championship in Switzerland, 1953/54 , Apel won the top scorer's crown in the Oberliga Nord with 21 goals . He shared this place of honor with Werner Heitkamp from Vice- Champion St. Pauli. With coach Paul Bornefeld and the other Arminia goalscorer Justus Eccarius (16), the Bischofsholer made the best offensive in the north with 78 hits and came in sixth. However, these successes faded with the simultaneous northern championship of the "Reds" from Hannover 96 and their title win in the finals on May 23, 1954 in Hamburg with a 5-1 win against 1. FC Kaiserslautern. Arminia started the round with 9: 1 points and suffered the first defeat in the local derby on September 20, 1953 against 96 in front of 30,000 spectators with 1: 3 goals. In the second half of the season - 23rd match day, February 7, 1954 - "Bollo" brought his Arminen 1-0 lead with his goal in the 56th minute, but the future champions managed a 1-1 draw. In the 4: 3 win against the Harburger TB, Apel excelled as a four-time goalscorer. Ironically against the north German series champion Hamburger SV, Arminia achieved the most memorable league result on matchday 25 with a 10-2 home win on February 20, 1954. "Bollo" shocked the HSV defense around Horst Schnoor , Fritz Laband and Jupp Posipal in the first minute with his opening goal on the snow-covered Bischofsholer Damm . In front of 10,000 spectators, the “blues” played their way into a real frenzy and dismantled the Willi Schröder victims (deduction of four points) from Hamburg with 10-2 goals. “Bollo” also hit the HSV goal a second time. Whether it was only the Arminen's "samba shoes" and the Knöpfle protégés who competed in normal "kicking boots" made this clear difference on the slippery surface of the snow, or whether the internal rifts at HSV played an essential role, ultimately does not change the Armine's victory. In the next round of 1954/55, Apel again confirmed his goal danger with 18 goals. Arminia can get the class with 24 points and a goal difference of 50:60 goals compared to 23:37 points for Bremer SV and is 12th in the final ranking, tied with Göttingen and Wolfsburg. After 179 league games with 114 goals, the 30-year-old was drawn to VfL Wolfsburg in the summer of 1955.

End of career

In the Autostadt, "Bollo" Apel can no longer bring his performance from the Armin time and returns after two rounds with 20 more league games and three goals to SV Arminia, who was relegated to the Lower Saxony amateur league, Season West in 1957, and is there in later years works as a youth coach for the "blues".

literature

• Jens Reimer Prüß (Ed.): Bung bottle with flat pass cork. The history of the Oberliga Nord 1947–1963. Klartext, Essen 1991, ISBN 3-88474-463-1 .
• Hardy Greens : Legendary football clubs. Northern Germany. Between TSV Achim, Hamburger SV and TuS Zeven. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2004, ISBN 3-89784-223-8 .
• Raphael Keppel, Die deutsche Fußball-Oberliga 1946–1963, Sport- und Spiel-Verlag Edgar Hitzel, 1989, ISBN 3-9802172-3-X