Leopold Gernhardt

Leopold "Poldl" Gernhardt (born March 16, 1920 in Vienna , † April 18, 2013 there ) was an Austrian football player and coach .

Player career

societies

Gernhardt began playing soccer at ASK Graphia and was taken with him by his friend Hermann Dvoracek to train the Rapid youngsters, where he was noticed by the coach Leopold Nitsch and soon changed clubs. He made his debut in the combat team in September 1939, where he owed an own goal against Vienna . In his first two seasons, the versatile player only made five appearances in the Gaume Championship, but slipped into the first team in the final round of the German championship because of an injury to the regular middle runner Johann Hofstätter . Gernhardt played all other games in the competition and reached the final against FC Schalke 04 with the Hütteldorfer . There he saved a ball on the goal line when the score was 1: 3 and was finally able to celebrate a 4-3 victory with his team.

From this point on, the strong player had secured a regular place with the green-whites, where he was mainly used on the right side. In the first post-war season he won the double with Rapid , where he mostly played alongside Franz Wagner and Franz Kaspirek in the runner row . The runner, who had meanwhile been promoted to team captain, was also successful with his new fellow men Gerhard Hanappi and Franz Golobic and won four more championship titles before he ended his active career in 1954.

National team

Gernhardt made his debut in the national team in August 1945 in the first international game after the war against the Hungarians as a right runner. In the following years he was a fixture in the national team. Due to his versatility, he was used in no less than five positions, including several times as a center forward. In the summer of 1948 he was part of the squad at the Olympic Games , but was not used in the Austrians' only competition. He often formed the runner-up for the Austrians with Hanappi and Ernst Ocffekt before he finally made his final appearances in the national team as a legal liaison. His last game was a 2-0 win against Belgium in March 1952.

Stations

• 1939 to 1954: SK Rapid Vienna

successes

• 7 × Austrian champion: 1940, 1941, 1946, 1948, 1951, 1952, 1954
• 1 × ÖFB Cup winner: 1946
• 1 × German champion: 1941
• 27 games for the Austrian national team

Coaching career

Immediately after the end of his playing career, Gernhardt switched to the position of section head at Rapid. When the contract with coach Viktor Hierländer was terminated in the spring of 1955 , he also took over the coaching post on an interim basis until the end of the season. In the fall of 1955 he stopped working at Rapid.

After briefly coaching SC Wacker Vienna in 1958 , Gernhardt took over the coaching position at Vienna in September 1960, which he oversaw for two seasons. This was followed by coaching positions at FC Lustenau 07 in the 1962/63 season and at SK Austria Klagenfurt in the 1963/64 season.

In 1965 Gernhardt became part of the ÖFB's supervisory team , where he was initially responsible for the youth selections and was assistant coach of the national team under Leopold Šťastný . Even after that he continued to work for the ÖFB, for example as a match observer at the 1978 World Cup .

Stations

• 1955: SK Rapid Vienna
• 1958: SC Wacker Vienna
• 1960 to 1962: First Vienna FC
• 1962 to 1963: FC Lustenau 07
• 1963 to 1964: SK Austria Klagenfurt

Web links

• Leopold Gernhardt in the database of weltfussball.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Mourning for Rapid legend Leopold Gernhardt ( Memento of the original from May 26, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.