Henri Coppens

Rik Coppens
Rik Coppens in 1953
Personnel
Surname	Henri François Louis Coppens
birthday	April 29, 1930
place of birth	Antwerp ,  Belgium
date of death	5th February 2015
Place of death	Wilrijk, Antwerp,  Belgium
size	169 cm
position	striker
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1946-1961	Beerschot VAC	362 (258)
1961–1962	Olympic Charleroi	27 00(3)
1962-1967	Crossing Molenbeek	121 0(32)
1967-1969	Berchem Sport	45 00(8)
1969-1970	Tubantia Borgerhout
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1948	Belgium U-19	4 00(0)
1949-1959	Belgium	47 0(21)
Stations as a trainer
Years	station
1971-1974	Berchem Sport
1974-1977	Germinal beerschot
1977-1981	Berchem Sport
1981-1982	Club Bruges
1 Only league games are given.

Henri François Louis Coppens , mostly Rik Coppens , (born April 29, 1930 in Antwerp , † February 5, 2015 in Wilrijk, Antwerp) was a Belgian football player and coach . The trained striker was considered an excellent dribbler and extremely dangerous for goals.

Club career

In his club career, Coppens mainly played for Beerschot VAC , which later merged with Germinal Ekeren to form Germinal Beerschot . He was the top scorer in the First Division in 1952, 1953 and 1955 and won the first Belgian Golden Shoe in 1954 . After leaving Beerschot, he continued his career from 1961 to 1970 at smaller clubs.

For the Belgian national team , Coppens played 47 times between 1949 and 1959, scoring 21 goals - ten of them in six games against the Netherlands alone . He took part in the 1954 World Cup, where he scored a goal in a 4: 4 against England , but Belgium was eliminated after the preliminary round.

Coaching career

Coppens coached the former first division club Berchem Sport , his parent club Beerschot VAC and in 1981/82 Club Bruges . He could not win a title with any of the three clubs.

Others

• Henri Coppens was often confused with his national team colleague Hendrik "Henri" Coppens , who came to 19 internationals between 1945 and 1949 and came to 498 league games and 168 league goals for RFC / KFC Malinois in just under two decades .
• He is considered the inventor of the “two-man penalty kick”: He ran for the penalty kick in the game “Belgium - Iceland” in 1957, but did not shoot, but first passed the ball to his teammate André Piters , from whom he returned it right in front of the Tor got back and then scored the goal from close range.

literature

• Michael Horn: Lexicon of international soccer stars. Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2004, ISBN 3-89533-466-9 .

Web links

• Rik Coppens in the database of the Belgian Football Association (English)

Individual evidence

1. ^ Coppens' statistics against the Netherlands at Voetbalstats.nl
2. ↑ Hendrik "Henri" Coppens in the database of the Belgian Football Association (English)
3. ↑ Hendrik "Henri" Coppens ( Memento from August 11, 2014 in the web archive archive.today ) on soccerdatabase.eu (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
-	Belgium's footballer of the year 1954	Fons Van Brandt