Fritz Becker (soccer player)

Fritz Becker
with the German national soccer team on April 5, 1908 (3rd from left)
Personnel
birthday	September 13, 1888
place of birth	Frankfurt a. M. ,  Germany
date of death	February 22, 1963
position	attack
Juniors
Years	station
	FC Germania 1894
1904-1906	Frankfurt Kickers
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1906-1911	Frankfurt Kickers
1911-1920	Frankfurt FV
1920-1921	Eintracht Frankfurt
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1908	Germany	1 (2)
1 Only league games are given.

Fritz Becker (born September 13, 1888 in Frankfurt am Main , † February 22, 1963 ) was a German football player . The 19-year-old Frankfurter Kickers attacker was part of the first German national team to play against Switzerland on April 5, 1908 . In the 3-5 defeat in Basel , Becker scored two of the German goals, including the first goal in Germany's international history .

career

Fritz Becker began his football career at Frankfurter FC Germania in 1894 , before playing for the Frankfurter Kickers from 1904 and, from the merger in 1911, for the Frankfurter Fußballverein , a predecessor of Eintracht Frankfurt . At the age of 16 he played on the "Hundswiese" under the name "Penne". Because of its liveliness, it was called “ball”. He played in the position of the liaison striker - today he would be called a director. He was a primary school student at the Klinger secondary school in Frankfurt, which is enthusiastic about sports. He was also considered a good athlete, whose strengths were primarily in the sprint.

On May 5, 1907, a selection of Frankfurt cities received the reigning English league champions Newcastle United on Hermannia-Platz in Ostpark . The Frankfurter Kickers was represented by their storm trio Bertrand, Fritz Becker and Fay. The game ended 6-2 for Newcastle, with Becker scoring both Frankfurt goals. After first ranks in the Nordkreis A-Class (1911/12) or 1912/13 and 1913/14 in the Nordkreis League Class, Becker and his teammates also took part in the games for the South German Championship from 1912 to 1914 .

According to Matheja, Becker later reported on the adventurous circumstances of his nomination for the first German international match against Switzerland on April 5 in Basel: “After it was published in the newspaper, I didn't hear about my line-up for the international match for over a week. Two Frankfurt-based members of the DFB board and the VSFV could only confirm that my nomination for the international match was correct. Finally, on Thursday (the game took place on the following Sunday, dV) the long-awaited news from the DFB came. Of course, I had hoped to find out something about a common meeting point, the route, the ticket, etc. in this letter. But far from it! (…) The situation slowly got precarious when there was no news from the DFB for the next 24 hours, and on Friday noon I didn't even know how to get to Basel. The joy of being able to take part in the great event was gradually replaced by the thought that something was wrong with the matter. (...) Then the final decision finally came on Friday afternoon, not even 24 hours before the train left for Basel. In a nutshell: On Saturday I would be given the ticket to travel to Basel at the platform barrier (train comes from Berlin). It cannot be said that the message from the DFB was very detailed and clear. But then, as instructed, I built myself up at the platform barrier in front of the train that came from Berlin around two o'clock. When the boarding and alighting of the passengers was over, I was still standing at the platform barrier; not like a proud national player, but an almost desperate one. (...) The salvation finally came from an older man, bathed in sweat like me, whom I did not know and had never seen in my life. He was visibly relieved when I answered his question: 'Are you the Beckerche from Frankfurt?' could answer with 'yes'. There was just enough time to hand me a ticket and shout that he was sitting up front with the Berliners. I just made it to the train driver's call: 'Get in and close the doors!' To obey. "

Before the game in Basel, there had been bitter disputes between the two DFB committees responsible for the line-up, the "Federal Board" and the "National Game Committee", which revolved around the question of the selection modalities. After a long discussion, in February 1908, at an extraordinary Bundestag held in Hanover, an agreement was reached to only invite players from “those parts of Germany where football is already being played in an orderly manner” and “to make the list on a case-by-case basis in such a way that The federal executive board and the federal committee should jointly determine which positions of the German team should be filled by the individual associations and leave the appointment of the players themselves to the associations concerned ”. The game itself was started by a German team, the four south Germans ( Arthur Hiller , Fritz Förderer , Eugen Kipp senior , Fritz Becker), three west Germans ( Karl Ludwig , Gustav Hensel , Willy Baumgärtner ), two middle Germans ( Walter Hempel , Ernst Jordan ), one north German ( Hans Weymar ) and a Berliner ( Fritz Baumgarten ) belonged. From a sporting point of view, the colorful team - the eleven players represented eleven different clubs from nine cities - did well and even took a 1-0 lead after five minutes thanks to Fritz Becker's stab. In the end, the Confederates won 5: 3 in front of around 4,000 spectators, but that did not matter. The decisive factor was that the start was finally made.

It remained for Becker with this one international match. Becker played his last league games in the 1920/21 season for Eintracht in the Nordmain district league, when the championship success was also successful at the end of the round. He later embarked on an administrative career and became a councilor . After finishing his playing days, he worked for many years in the game committee of Eintracht and was finally appointed honorary captain of the Adler-Elf.

literature

• Lorenz Knieriem, Hardy Grüne : Player Lexicon 1890 - 1963 . In: Encyclopedia of German League Football . tape 8 . AGON, Kassel 2006, ISBN 3-89784-148-7 , p. 23 .
• Ulrich Matheja: Schlappekicker and sky striker. The story of Eintracht Frankfurt. Publishing house Die Werkstatt. Göttingen 2004. ISBN 3-89533-427-8 . P. 326.

Web links

• Fritz Becker in the Eintracht archive
• Fritz Becker in the database of fussballdaten.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Jürgen Bitter: Germany's football. The encyclopedia. FA Herbig. Munich 2008. ISBN 978-3-7766-2558-5 . P. 49
2. ↑ Jürgen Bitter : Germany's national soccer player: the lexicon . SVB Sportverlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-328-00749-0 , p. 33 f .
3. ↑ Ulrich Matheja: Schlappekicker and Himmelsstürmer. The story of Eintracht Frankfurt. P. 21
4. ↑ Ulrich Matheja: Schlappekicker and Himmelsstürmer. The story of Eintracht Frankfurt. Pp. 31/32
5. ↑ Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling (ed.): The history of the national soccer team. Publishing house Die Werkstatt. Göttingen 2008. ISBN 978-3-89533-578-5 . P. 20
6. ↑ Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling (ed.): The history of the national soccer team. Publishing house Die Werkstatt. Göttingen 2008. ISBN 978-3-89533-578-5 . P. 23