Leopold Grundwald

Leopold Grundwald (born October 28, 1891 in Vienna , † April 9, 1969 ibid) was an Austrian football player in the position of striker and later football coach. Together with the national team, he took part as a player in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm .

Career

First Austrian champion and Olympic Games

Leopold Grundwald, known as "Grundl", began his football career at Rapid Vienna and from 1909 was a member of the club's team. Together with Gustav Blaha and Heinrich Körner , he formed the best attack in the league in the first Austrian championship in 1911/12 and became Austria's first football champion with the Green-Whites. Leopold Grundwald himself contributed at least 11 goals in 17 games, although not all goal scorers from the season are known. His talent did not go unnoticed by the Austrian Football Association , so that the striker was nominated for the games of the Austrian national team at the Olympic Games in Stockholm in 1912.

In Stockholm, however, Leopold Grundwald had to watch as the Austrian team was eliminated after a 5-1 win over Germany against the Netherlands . The national team was able to take part in the competition in a specially created, but actually meaningless, "round of hope". Here Leopold Grundwald was used for the first time in the 1-0 quarter-final victory over Norway . In the semi-final match against Italy , he already contributed his first two international goals to the 5-1 victory. In the final, however, he lost 3-0 with the Hungary team

Temporary end and return

In the Austrian league, Grundwald was able to successfully defend the title in 1913, but not quite match the form of the previous year. Even in the national team it didn’t really work out with goals. Although he was able to score 10 goals in 18 games for Rapid in 19 games in the runner-up season of 1914, he slowly developed into an option in both teams and after 1914 was eliminated from the first team in both teams. For Rapid, he only played three games in the 1915 season, he was no longer on the national team.

In the 1915/16 season he returned to the Green-Whites' starting line-up, scored 12 goals in 18 games and brought the championship plate to Hütteldorf for the third time . In the next season, Leopold Grundwald's career end, also due to the war, was in the air. He contributed 6 more goals to Rapids' fourth league title and played his last international match against Hungary in Budapest on October 1, 1916 , where he scored the decisive goal in the 3-2 Austrians. In the 1917/18 season it was no longer used.

End of career

After the end of the First World War , he initially stayed at the club as a substitute player until 1922. Nevertheless, he was used regularly, in 1921 even completed 11 games in the championship and 4 cup games. Leopold Grundwald was three more times champion with the green-whites (1919-1921) and won the first two cup competitions in Austria (1919-1920). After a successful career at Rapid, he finally left the club in 1922, then worked as a player at Wiener AF and tried his hand at coaching, for example at the traditional Swiss club FC St. Gallen .

successes

• 7 × Austrian champion : 1912, 1913, 1916, 1917, 1919, 1920, 1921
• 2 × Austrian Cup winners : 1919, 1920
• 8 international matches and 3 goals for the Austrian national soccer team from 1912 to 1916

Web links

• Leopold Grundwald in the database of Sports-Reference (English; archived from the original )