Jiří Sobotka

Jiří Sobotka
Personnel
Surname	Jiří Sobotka also: Georges Sobotka
birthday	June 6, 1911
place of birth	Prague ,  Austria-Hungary
date of death	May 20, 1994
Place of death	Intragna ,  Switzerland
size	172 cm
position	striker
Juniors
Years	station
	Čechoslovan Košíře
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1931-1940	Slavia Prague	(67)
1940-1941	Hajduk Split	34 (17)
1942	Slavia Prague	(0)
1943-1946	SK Baťa Zlín	(20)
1946-1953	FC La Chaux-de-Fonds	95 (29)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1934-1937	Czechoslovakia	23 (8)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1940-1941	Hajduk Split
1946-1959	FC La Chaux-de-Fonds
1959-1961	Feyenoord Rotterdam
1961-1965	FC Basel
1964	Switzerland
1965-1967	FC Biel-Bienne
1968-1970	SC Charleroi
1970	UE Sant Andreu
1971-1972	FC La Chaux-de-Fonds
1972-1973	FC Aarau
1973-1976	AC Bellinzona
1 Only league games are given.

Jiří Sobotka , also known as Georges Sobotka (born June 6, 1911 in Prague , † May 20, 1994 in Intragna ), was a Czech - Swiss football player and coach . With the national team of Czechoslovakia he was runner-up in 1934. With Slavia Prague , the striker was six times champion and once top scorer in Czechoslovakia and winner of the Mitropa Cup in 1938 . With Hajduk Split he became the Croatian player-coach during the war. As a coach, he was five times with FC La Chaux-de-Fonds , including twice as a player- coach , and with FC Basel once a Swiss Cup winner. With La Chaux-de-Fonds he was also twice Swiss champion. Sobotka was a grandson of the composer Antonín Dvořák , who, along with Karel Gott, is one of the most famous Czech musicians.

Player career

Sobotka began playing football with Čechoslovan Košíře, at the age of 19 he moved to Slavia Prague . With Slavia, the striker was national champion in 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1940 and 1942. Slavia also won the Mitropa Cup in 1938 , where Sobotka was not in the finals against the defending champion Ferencvárosi TC from Budapest. In 1934 he was also, together with the Belgian Raymond Braine from local rivals Sparta , league top scorer with 18 goals.

Shortly before the World Cup in 1934 , Sobotka made his debut in the Czechoslovak national team and was part of the team that lost 2-1 to hosts Italy in the World Cup final in Rome and thus became vice world champion. At the tournament he took part in all four games of the team around goalkeeper František Plánička and star striker Oldřich Nejedlý and scored a goal. By 1937, the attacker completed 23 appearances in the selection and scored eight goals.

1940 Sobotka went to the Croatian club Hajduk Split , where the Czech worked as a player- coach and won the championship. In 1942 he returned to Slavia Prague, but soon switched to Baťa Zlín .

Coaching career

In 1946 Sobotka left Czechoslovakia forever and emigrated to Switzerland . At FC La Chaux-de-Fonds he was a player-coach until 1953, then only worked as a coach until 1958. In 1948, 1951, 1954, 1955, 1957 he and his team won the Swiss Cup , in 1954 and 1955 also the championship and thus the double .

Sobotka left La Chaux-de-Fonds in 1959 for Feyenoord Rotterdam , with whom he became Dutch champion in 1961. From 1961 to 1965 Sobotka coached FC Basel, with which the Czech won the Swiss Cup in 1963.

In the spring of 1964 Sobotka coached the Swiss national team for three games . On April 15, 1964, the Swiss defeated Belgium 2-0 in Geneva , and on April 29, 1964 they lost 3-2 to Portugal in Zurich . The 1: 3 defeat against Italy on May 10, 1964 in Lausanne was Sobotka's last game as Swiss national coach.

Between 1965 and 1967 he coached FC Biel-Bienne , then from 1968 to 1970 he was under contract with the Belgian first division club Sporting Charleroi and led them to the runner-up in the first season and thus the best placement in the club's history. After his second season at Charleroi, he was replaced by the Austrian Lukas "Harry" Aurednik , who had to make way for Tony Antonneau in January 1971 , under whom the team was relegated in 1971.

In the 1970/71 season, Sobotka coached the Catalan second division club UE Sant Andreu as the successor to Ferdinand Daučík , who had played with Sobotka at Slavia Prague from 1934 to 1941 , but where he was eliminated after the first half of the season and was replaced by Luis Aloy .

As the successor to the Greek Dan Georgiadis , who moved to Sevilla FC in Spain after half a year in Switzerland , he was again coach of FC La Chaux-de-Fonds for one season , with whom he finished 11th in the Fourteen league took. After the end of the season, he left at his own initiative. In early December 1972 he became a coach at FC Aarau , the penultimate in the National League B , as the successor to player- coach Werner Olk (the "Adler von Giesing"). Olk stayed as a player and at the end of the season the team was 10th among fourteen clubs and so kept the class. From 1973 to 1976 he coached another second division club with AC Bellinzona . With Bellinzona he rose to the first division in 1976, but after he only managed one point in the first six games, he was dismissed there. Louis Maurer replaced him here, but failed to stay up.

successes

player

• Vice world champion 1934
• Master of Czechoslovakia: 1933, 1934, 1935, 1937, 1940 and 1942
• Champion of Croatia: 1941 *
• Top scorer in Czechoslovakia: 1934 (18 goals)

Trainer

• Champion of Switzerland: 1954, 1955
• Swiss Cup winners: 1948 *, 1951 *, 1954, 1955, 1957 and 1963
• Master of the Netherlands: 1961

* Success as a player-coach

literature

• Jindřich Horák, Lubomír Král: Encyclopedie našeho fotbalu. Sto let českého a slovenského fotbalu. Domací soutěže . Libri, Praha 1997, ISBN 80-85983-22-2 .
• Luboš Jeřábek: Český a československý fotbal. Lexicon osobností a klubů . Grada, Praha 2007, ISBN 978-80-247-1656-5 .
• Karel Vaněk et al .: Malá encyklopedie fotbalu . Olympia, Prague 1984.

Web links

• Jiří Sobotka in the database of weltfussball.de
• International match statistics on fotbal.cz , Czech
• Statistics sfl.ch
• Success as a player and coach on fussball-schweiz.ch

Individual evidence

1. ^ Successful coach Georges Sobotka has died , Thuner Tagblatt , May 25, 1994, p. 16