Horst Gecks

Horst "Pille" Gecks (born September 18, 1942 in Duisburg ) is a former German soccer player and current trainer . From 1963 to 1974 he played 192 games in the Bundesliga and scored 53 goals.

career

Youth and Oberliga West - until 1963

Horst "Pille" Gecks, grew up in Mittelmeiderich , still played handball at the age of 15 and only joined the youth department of Meidericher SV at the age of 16 . The ball artist conveyed his tackling skills on the circle - "Pill" weighed 64 kg in the Bundesliga at 1.78 m height - in football in filigree dribbling on the wing, often degrading the opposing defenders to "slalom poles". Although at the beginning of his football career he did not make his debut as a contract footballer with ultimate consistency and seriousness, he celebrated his debut in the league team of the "Zebras" in the last round of the football Oberliga West , 1962/63. Coach Willi Multhaup used the man from his own youth and amateur team in six games in the major league. Including on May 4, 1963 in the 2-1 victorious local derby against Hamborn 07 where stopper "Pitter" Danzberg scored the winning goal in the 90th minute and Meiderich climbed from sixth to fourth place. As third in the table, Meidericher SV was nominated at the end of the round for the new Bundesliga from the 1963/64 season. In addition to Gecks, the scaffolding of the "Zebra" team at that time consisted mainly of other players from Meiderich - Dieter Danzberg , Werner Lotz , Manfred Müller , Ludwig Nolden , Günter Preuß , Hartmut Heidemann , Werner Krämer , Heinz Versteeg - and Gecks says in retrospect:

“ We kept running into each other on the street. "

Bundesliga with Meiderich - until 1969

On the fifth match day, September 21, 1963, “Pille” made its debut in a 1-1 draw in Bremen in the Bundesliga. Coach Rudi Gutendorf had to replace Helmut Rahn after he was sent off on matchday four in the attack and therefore built Gecks on the left wing. For the surprising runner-up in the 1963/64 season , "Pille" contributed five hits in twelve missions. With coach Hermann Eppenhoff the eighth place was achieved in the 1966 world championship season - Gecks came to 20 league games with seven goals - and after successes against Schalke 04, Karlsruher SC and 1. FC Kaiserslautern made it into the DFB Cup final . In the Bundesliga and in the Cup, Gecks mostly played on the left wing in this round, as Carl-Heinz Rühl, a dangerous right winger, had come to the "Zebras". FC Bayern Munich won the final on June 4, 1966 in Frankfurt am Main with 4-2 goals after goal-scorer Rüdiger Mielke shot MSV 1-0 in the 28th minute. In the two rounds in 1967/68 and 1968/69, “Pille” Gecks completed all 68 Bundesliga games for the “Zebras” and also distinguished himself as a goal scorer 20 times. Together with Rainer Budde , he was now primarily responsible for goals for the Niederrhein-Elf. From 1963 to 1969 there were a total of 41 goals “because we always had so much fun,” said Gecks. The hopeful offensive strength of the cup finalists from 1966 was no longer available. Werner Krämer and Carl-Heinz Rühl emigrated to Hamburger SV and 1. FC Köln in 1967, Heinz van Haaren found his way to Schalke in 1968 and the young striker Rüdiger Mielke had to start his 1966/67 season preparation after a serious knee injury To end career. "Pille" Gecks, he had turned down a contract offer from FC Bayern Munich in 1966, signed a contract with Kickers Offenbach in 1969 after 139 Bundesliga games with 41 goals for MSV Duisburg and moved to the regional soccer league south. The DFB had used the dribbler on the wing in 1964 and 1965 in two international matches of the junior national team U-23 against Czechoslovakia and England alongside Günter Netzer , Hartmut Heidemann, Sigfried Held and Hannes Löhr . With the Bundesliga game on June 7, 1969 in his home Wedau Stadium in the 0-0 draw against Hamburger SV, he said goodbye to the Lower Rhine and moved to Bieberer Berg .

Offenbach - 1969 to 1972

After relegation to the Bundesliga in 1969, Kickers President Horst Gregorio Canellas had made a four-fold loan from the Weisweiler talents squad with the Kremers twins, Winfried Schäfer and Klaus Winkler, and also signed the recognized Bundesliga striker Horst Gecks from Meiderich. In fact, OFC won the championship in the Regionalliga Süd ahead of Karlsruher SC and 1. FC Nürnberg and made it into the Bundesliga promotion round. Gecks had played 36 games and scored 17 goals. Since trainer Paul Oßwald had to resign for health reasons in November 1969, Zlatko Čajkovski took over the training management from January 1970 and also successfully led the Kickers through the promotion round. The impulsive Kickers president brought the young coach Aki Schmidt to Bieberer Berg for the Bundesliga series 1970/71 .

Due to an extreme winter and the football World Cup in 1970 in Mexico in the summer of 1970, the 1969/70 DFB Cup was played from the round of 16 immediately before the start of the round in 1970/71. The Offenbach promotion team - the Hessians won the last promotion game on June 24, 1970 in their own stadium with 4-1 goals against FK Pirmasens - prevailed on July 30 with a 2-1 win after extra time against Borussia Dortmund in the round of 16. This was followed by a 3-0 away win in the derby against Eintracht Frankfurt and a 4-2 win in the semifinals after extra time against 1. FC Nürnberg and thus Offenbach was in the DFB Cup final eight weeks after promotion on August 29 in Hanover. Opponent was the favored 1. FC Köln with the national players Manfred Manglitz , Wolfgang Weber , Heinz Flohe , Wolfgang Overath and Hannes Löhr . At the time of the cup final Offenbach had already played two games in the Bundesliga - 2-0 defeat in Mönchengladbach and 2-1 home win on August 22 against Werder Bremen with a Gecks goal - and tried it in the final with a 4-4 -2 formation. From the dense midfield with Roland Weida , Helmut Schmidt, Winfried Schäfer and Walter Bechtold , the two counter-strikers Klaus Winkler and "Pille" Gecks should cause unrest in the Cologne defense. The tactic worked: In the 24th minute, Winkler brought the OFC into the lead and after the break, coach Ernst Ocffekt's team in midfield was much too cumbersome and was prone to counterattacks. In the 63rd minute, “Pille” Gecks ran up and away from his opponent Werner Biskup in a 60-meter sprint, rounded keeper Manfred Manglitz and scored the 2-0 for the OFC.

In Offenbach, the high was inevitably followed by the low. Novice coach Alfred Schmidt was replaced by Gutendorf on September 28, and "Riegel-Rudi" was replaced by Kuno Klötzer on February 24, 1971 . On the 33rd match day Offenbach was in 15th place with 27:39 points - one point behind the trio of Stuttgart, Dortmund and Frankfurt - tied with Bielefeld and one point ahead of Oberhausen. The relegation final on June 5, 1971 was not only exciting but also ominous. Both Oberhausen (point win in Braunschweig) and Bielefeld (victory at third in the table Hertha BSC) scored sensational points, causing the stunned OFC to fall to 17th place . Gecks had played 33 games and scored eight goals in the round. He was also active in the two European Cup matches against Club Brugge in the preliminary round.

All the sporting splendor of this season, rich in highlights, was eclipsed when Offenbach's President Canellas invited to a press conference the day after the league final and presented evidence of "sold" games by means of tape recordings . In the Bundesliga, games had been manipulated for cash.

Gecks stayed in Offenbach even after relegation and made himself useful as a hobby player agent when he referred his friend Erwin Kostedde from Standard Liège to Offenbach. Since Sigfried Held, Fred Bockholt and Hans Schmidradner also came to Offenbach, winning the championship in the Regionalliga Süd was compulsory for coach Kuno Klötzer and assertion in the promotion round was also expected. The team and coach withstood the pressure - Rot-Weiss Essen made it very difficult in the promotion round for the eleven from Bieberer Berg and only failed because of the poorer goal difference - and returned to the Bundesliga. Gecks had played 33 games in the Regionalliga and, alongside Erwin Kostedde (27 goals), also contributed 13 goals to the championship. After the second promotion to the Bundesliga with Offenbach, "Pille" Gecks returned to the West after a total of 119 competitive games with 43 goals and signed a contract with Rot-Weiss Essen in the Regionalliga West for the 1972/73 round.

Essen - 1972 to 1975

The team from Hafenstrasse won the championship with 104:40 goals and three points ahead of runner-up SC Fortuna Cologne in 1973 with coach Horst Witzler . The offensive power of the players Willi Lippens , Dieter Bast , Günter Fürhoff and Gecks - 31 regional league games with eleven goals - was no match for an opponent in the West. RWE's success story continued in the promotion round. With 14: 2 points, the promotion to the Bundesliga was made perfect. “Pille” was involved in six games with three goals and was promoted to the Bundesliga for the third time with a team.

The promoted coach replaced Witzler on September 28, 1973 with the previous player Diethelm Ferner and finished 13th at the end of the round. Gecks had played another 20 games in the Bundesliga and scored four goals. After the season he ended his career in the top German league after a total of 192 Bundesliga appearances and 53 goals.

In 1974/75 he was still with local rivals vom Uhlenkrug, Schwarz-Weiß Essen , for a season in the 2nd Bundesliga North. At the side of his team- mates Hans Wulf , Holger Trimhold , Franz-Josef Laufer and Hans Fritsche , the veteran completed 30 games and SWE took twelfth place. "Pille" Gecks played his last game in professional football on June 15, 1975 in a 4-1 home win against VfL Osnabrück, where he stormed again on the right wing.

Amateur camp and coach

From the 1975/76 round he held the position of player-coach at Blau-Weiß Wulfen . The station at Kevelaerer SV followed, where he also ended his active playing career. Until 2012 Gecks was coach of the Kevelaerer SV and SV Viktoria Winnekendonk for several periods.

literature

• Gerd Dembrowski, Dirk Piesczek, Jörg Riederer: Im Revier der Zebras , Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 978-3-89533-307-1 .
• Ulrich Homann, Ernst Thoman (ed.): When the duck ran amok, stories from the first ten years of the Bundesliga 1963–1973 , contributions by Hans Wilhelm Bertram ..., plain text, Essen 1989, ISBN 3-88474-443-7 .
• Ulrich Homann (Hrsg.): Hellfire on Ascension. The history of the promotion rounds to the Bundesliga 1963–1974. Klartext, Essen 1990, ISBN 3-88474-346-5 .
• Ulrich Merk, Andre Schulin, Maik Großmann: Bundesliga Chronicle 1970/71. Points for money. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2007, ISBN 978-3-89784-090-4 .
• Matthias Weinrich, Hardy Greens : Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 6: German Cup history since 1935. Pictures, statistics, stories, constellations. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2000, ISBN 3-89784-146-0 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dembowski / Piesczek / Riederer, Im Revier der Zebras, page 299
2. ↑ Ulrich Homann / Ernst Thoman (eds.), When the duck ran amok, stories from the first ten years of the Bundesliga 1963–1973, page 77
3. ^ Matthias Weinrich, Hardy Greens: Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 6: German Cup history since 1935. Pictures, statistics, stories, constellations. P. 245.
4. ↑ Merk / Schulin / Großmann, Bundesliga Chronicle 1970/71, page 184
5. ^ Matthias Weinrich, 35 Years of the Bundesliga, Part 1, The founding years 1963–1975, page 228
6. ↑ Dembowski / Piesczek / Riederer, Im Revier der Zebras, Die Geschichte des MSV Duisburg, page 299