Fritz Langner

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Fritz Langner:
Depiction on a collecting picture from 1937

Fritz Langner (born August 8, 1912 in Breslau ; † January 25, 1998 ) was a German football player and coach. In 1946 he won the district championship with Eckernförder SV before Holstein Kiel (top division at that time in Schleswig-Holstein) and in 1959 the West German championship with Westfalia Herne in Oberliga West and coached FC Schalke 04 , Werder Bremen and TSV 1860 Munich in the Bundesliga . With VfL Osnabrück , Langner was champion of the Regionalliga Nord in 1971.

Player and coach career until the mid-1950s

Fritz Langner began his football career in his hometown of Breslau with the United Breslauer Sportfreunde (the first of the most successful of the Breslauer football clubs - 1928 Southeast German runner-up ) and then continued it with the Breslauer SpVgg 02 . With the sports association 02 from Breslau, Langner was runner-up in the Gauliga Silesia in 1937/38 , champion of the Gauliga Lower Silesia in 1941/42 (and then eliminated in the second round of the German championship), 1942/43 runner-up in the Gauliga Lower Silesia and the following year second in the final round the Lower Silesian Championship. The multiple choice player from Silesia won the Reichsbund Cup in 1939 with his team .

After the end of the Second World War , Langner moved to Schleswig-Holstein , where he first played for one season for Eckernförder SV in 1945/46. Both Langner and Kurt Baluses made their debut as coach in Eckernförde this season - both were player-coaches there in 1945/46. The relay championship won in the points round in 1945/46 in the district of Kiel (top division), with which Eckernförde SV had actually qualified for the final round of the North German soccer championship, ensured through the decision of the then responsible district association to schedule a playoff and the winner Holstein To nominate Kiel (3: 2) instead of Eckernförder SV, for some vortex. The violation of a limited gambling ban by the British military government prompted them to intervene (among other things, the association was dissolved and the Holstein board was suspended for life). Langner and Baluses were deprived of the fruits of their first coaching activity, as no club from the district was allowed to take part in the finals.

Langner moved for a short time as a player to Itzehoer SV , but joined Concordia Hamburg in 1946/47 and was instrumental in ensuring that the club reached the new Oberliga Nord . In 1948 he completed the first soccer teacher course under the national coach Sepp Herberger together with Hennes Weisweiler , Herbert Widmayer , Helmut Schneider , Walter Ochs and Fritz Pliska and played at TSV Detmold , then returned to Hamburg and took over from 1948 to 1952 Coaching position at Concordia. According to individual information, Langner is said to have looked after the TSG Hohenhausen team from time to time, and he also appears in the literature as the coach of Kassel 03. Another, later coaching station was the SG Düren 99 club .

Champion in the Oberliga West 1959

Coach Fritz Langner surprisingly won the championship in the west in 1959 with the 12th of the 1957/58 season, Westfalia Herne , whom he took over as coach in 1955. In the season after the soccer world championship in Sweden in 1958 , the former Silesian led the Kicker from the stadium at Strünkede Castle with 45:15 points and 60:23 goals for the Oberliga championship in the west. The defensive performance was a guarantee for this success with 23 goals conceded in 30 league games. The individual skills of the pillars Hans Tilkowski , Alfred Pyka and Helmut Benthaus , who were therefore also used in the national team, also contributed to this. Since Langner also put a lot of emphasis on running work and discipline, the supposed favorites 1. FC Köln , Fortuna Düsseldorf , Borussia Dortmund , Alemannia Aachen and Schalke 04 were left behind at the end of the round . However , the Herner success story did not continue in the final round of the German championship . From a sporting point of view, the move to the Rote Erde stadium in Dortmund was certainly not helpful. In the round of 1959/60 you could confirm the success of the runner-up afterwards. In the summer of 1962, however, the Herne chapter was over for Langner, he moved to Borussia Mönchengladbach in the run-up to the Bundesliga .

Coaching stations 1962–1969

In the last season of the Oberliga West, 1962/63, he reached only 11th place with Mönchengladbach with 24:36 points, but he initiated the change in the team. He performed this task in his second year, 1963/64 in the Regionalliga West, but then very clearly in the team. Günter Netzer , who came to Bökelberg from local rivals 1. FC Mönchengladbach, immediately became a regular player. He came on 35 missions and scored nine goals. With Horst-Dieter Höttges , Egon Milder and Rudolf Pöggeler , other newcomers also asserted themselves. Since Herbert L Bäumen could also play more games, the team had new contours and was prepared for the future. Langner succumbed to the lure of the Bundesliga and did not finish his work. From April 26, 1964, he took over the training management at Schalke 04 and as his successor, Hennes Weisweiler from Cologne moved to Borussia in Mönchengladbach. In the first season in Schalke things didn't go well at all, not for Langner and not for Schalke either. With only seven wins and eight draws and fifteen defeats, he only got 22:38 points in the 1964/65 round and was thus in last place in the table. Only by increasing the league to 18 clubs could the class be maintained. With five national players in their own ranks, this sporting yield was difficult to understand. With Willi Schulz , Hans Nowak , Günther Herrmann, Willi Koslowski and Reinhard Libuda, more could have been achieved without financial and interpersonal disharmony.

In the 1965/66 season, despite the departures of Schulz, Horst, Libuda, Gerhardt, Koslowski, Crawatzo and Nowak, the "Sergeant" Langner showed what he was able to do as a coach when there was cohesion and harmony in the team were. He held the class with a team with Schalke that was significantly weakened compared to last year. Only the old international Alfred Pyka and the 20-time amateur national player Gerhard Neuser were players by name among the newcomers. The debutant Klaus Fichtel from the amateur club Arminia Ickern has been a big player in the Bundesliga since that season. Progress did not occur in the third year, only the start of the goalkeeper talent Norbert Nigbur was recorded as positive, and therefore the dismissal at the end of the round on June 5, 1967 was not surprising, but at most the time. After a short creative break, Langner took over as coach on September 9, 1967 with the champions from 1965, SV Werder Bremen. After three defeats at the start of the round, Günter Brocker was dismissed at the Weser and hoped for the tough discipline master Langner. Indeed, under his command, the march through the table succeeded. At the end of the round they were runner-up with 44:24 points, only Max Merkel , with his 1. FC Nürnberg as the new champion, was still able to prevent the way to the top through Bremen.

Langner relied on the tried and tested defense with Bernard - Piontek , Höttges - Steinmann , Schütz and Lorenz , the hardworkers in midfield Björnmose , Danielsen and Ferner , as well as the fast counterattackers Bernd Rupp and Werner Görts . After the 1968/69 season he said goodbye in Bremen and moved on to TSV 1860 Munich. With the master of the year 1966, however, the process of decline could not be stopped mainly with hard training and discipline demands. On November 12, 1969, this station was over for him. At the end of the round, the Munich team was relegated to the regional league. Langner had now taken over Freiburg FC , but after the end of the 1969/70 season, his career in the Bundesliga was over for him in Breisgau and apart from two short appearances in May 1972 and from February 1980 with the old friends of SV Werder Bremen over.

Statements about Langner

"Fritz was one of the toughest coaches there was," remembers Rudi Assauer in " 100 Years of Schalke ". “He put a lot of effort into leg work and discipline. But he also knew a lot about football - and was a creepy buddy guy. ”He was a coach who always swept with an iron broom. "Werder never had a coach who lived so intensely for football". With these words, Werder veteran Höttges said goodbye to Fritz Langner. In the chapter about VfL Osnabrück, where he was coach in the 1970/71 round, the book about the promotion rounds to the Bundesliga in the Klartext-Verlag in Essen can be read as follows:

The “whip” came to the Bremen bridge. And no one other than Fritz Langner swung it. "I am proud to be considered a sergeant," he said when he took office. The man who followed in the footsteps of Radoslav Momirski, who was too soft for many, was preceded by the reputation of the "iron Fritz" from every corner of the country.

Stations as a player

Coaching stations

swell

  • Jürgen Bitter : Germany's football. The encyclopedia. Sportverlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-328-00857-8 .
  • Matthias Weinrich: Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 3: 35 years of the Bundesliga. Part 1. The founding years 1963–1975. Stories, pictures, constellations, tables. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 1998, ISBN 3-89784-132-0 .
  • Ulrich Merk, André Schulin: Bundesliga chronicle 1964/65. Volume 2: Werder's surprise coup. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2004, ISBN 3-89784-084-7 .
  • Ulrich Merk, André Schulin: Bundesliga chronicle 1965/66. Volume 3: Newcomers cause a sensation. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-89784-085-5 .
  • Hardy Greens : hired, hailed, fired. The 250 premature coach changes in the history of the Bundesliga since 1963. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2000, ISBN 3-89784-104-5 .
  • The omniscient football, sports magazine, Olympia-Verlag, 1962.
  • Chronicle of Eckernförder SV, 1998.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Sport (Munich), No. 6/1947, page 10, as well as: 50 years SC Concordia, Hamburg 1957, team photo on page 40. In this club history, Langner is referred to as a newcomer at the beginning of the season 46/47 (page 37).
  2. ^ Siegfried Klemm: Eight months of TSV fight. Detmold , there 1949, p. 4.
  3. ^ Horst Biese, Herbert Peiler: Flanks, goals and parades. 100 years of football in Kassel , 1993, p. 100.
personal data
SURNAME Langner, Fritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German soccer player and coach
DATE OF BIRTH August 8, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Breslau , German Empire
DATE OF DEATH January 25, 1998