Keith Spurgeon

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Keith Spurgeon
Keith Spurgeon (1964) .jpg
Keith Spurgeon (1964)
Personnel
birthday August 29, 1932
date of death December 1984

Keith Spurgeon (born August 29, 1932 , † December 1984 ) was an English football player and coach. As a player, he did not make his breakthrough as a professional. In his coaching career, engagements in the first leagues of the Netherlands stand out, including at AFC Ajax, where he won the Dutch Cup, and Sweden. With APOEL he was cup winner and runner-up of Cyprus.

Career

Spurgeon tried a professional career at Tottenham Hotspur , but where he came only to a few appearances in the second team. After military service, he came from October 1952 to Margate FC , who played in the Kent League , where he was titular of the reserves, but only got twice in the combat team. In December 1953, he moved to the Isthmian League antretenden Leytonstone FC . In April 1955 he returned to Margate, where he did not get beyond the reserve team until the end of the 1954/55 season. Then he was with Folkestone FC in the Kent League and from 1957/58 Herne Bay FC in the same league, where he was promoted to the fighting team, which was relegated to the second division in 1958 after a year of league membership. For the 1960/61 season he moved to Snowdown Colliery Welfare in the short-lived Aetolian League . At the beginning of October 1960, however, Spurgeon was hired as a coach - as a "coach" as opposed to the "manager" - by Clapton FC , at one time bottom of the Isthmian League, where he was immediately employed as a defender. A knee injury is said to have accelerated the end of Spurgeon's football career, who completed his coaching training at the age of 24 around 1957.

In 1961, at the age of 28, he replaced his compatriot Vic Buckingham as coach of Ajax Amsterdam , where he won the International Football Cup in 1961/62 . In the league he was with last year's runner-up, in which Ton Pronk , Sjaak Swart , Co Prins and above all the left winger Piet Keizer were among the better-known players. Involuntarily, as it is said, he only stayed one season with the club and the Austrian Joseph Gruber replaced him. During his time at Ajax, he lived in a bungalow near the training ground at De Meer Stadium , and the son of Ajax's cleaning lady, Johan , occasionally dined with his family.

With his move to Blauw Wit Amsterdam , who came third in 1961/62 as a newcomer and thus achieved the best placement in the club's history, relegation began. Blau Wit was only eleventh and even rose under his successor the following season and should never be top notch again.

The next interesting station was the 1968 Dallas Tornado in the first season of the North American Soccer League . The team of the heir to several oil billions, Lamar Hunt , got off to a bad start and was therefore looking for a new coach for the dismissed Bob Kap , who later brought European football players to American football as a kicker and thus became a pioneer. Spurgeon was not able to lead the team, consisting almost entirely of nameless legionnaires, mainly British, onto the road to success, which thus became clear bottom of the group with only two wins and four draws from 32 games. "As a tornado you wouldn't even have blown a candle," he is said to have grumbled at his players.

After a few insignificant positions, he ended up with the Stockholm suburb AIK Solna in 1975 , which had been runner-up the year before. Spurgeon announced that they wanted to turn AIK into a big club and also got off to a great start into the season. After eight match days, the team was in first place. The derby against Djurgårdens IF came on the ninth matchday on May 29 . In front of the biggest home crowd that AIK should have in the 20th century - more than 40,000 spectators came to Råsunda Stadium - AIK lost 2-1 and also lost the championship lead. The results became increasingly mixed, and the players also found it increasingly stupid that they had to address Spurgeon as "Boss". The working atmosphere was disturbed and in August Spurgeon wrote a letter to the club management that he did not feel valued enough by them and at the same time announced his resignation. The club management stepped into action and replaced him. The results stabilized and AIK finished the season in fifth place.

1977/78 he had an engagement with APOEL Nicosia where he was runner-up. But in Cyprus it is only important for APOEL to face the permanent rivals for the Omonia championship . That left Spurgeon on the island for one year.

In 1979 he got an engagement with the southwestern Swedish first division team Landskrona BoIS with whom he could just keep the class in the same year, but luck was missing in his second season .

He died in December 1984 in Sweden, where he last lived in Vittangi in the north of the country, where Sweden says goodnight to Finland, of motor neuron disease at the age of 52. His son Kevin (* 1959) became a professional golfer.

Statistical overview

Player career
Coaching career

League placements in brackets (first league, unless otherwise stated).

successes

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Clapton Coach at Left-Half , Daily Telegraph , London, October 14, 1960, p. 10.
  2. ↑ Profile . Margate FC History. Retrieved May 22, 2019.
  3. ↑ Fråga AIK om fotbollsstatistik - 2005 , AIK Solna, 2005  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.aik.se
  4. ^ Dagens Nyheter , Stockholm, 1984-12-09, p. 43
personal data
SURNAME Spurgeon, Keith
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English football coach
DATE OF BIRTH August 29, 1932
DATE OF DEATH December 1984