Puck van Heel

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"Puck" van Heel (front 1934)

Gerardus Henricus "Puck" van Heel (born January 21, 1904 in Rotterdam , Netherlands ; † December 18, 1984 ibid) was a Dutch football player who was active in the 1920s and 1930s for Feijenoord in his hometown of Rotterdam. From 1925 to 1938 he played in the national team ; with a total of 64 missions he was the record national player of the Oranje elftal until 1979 .

Club career

Van Heel was the fourth of eleven children of a Roman Catholic family from Rotterdam-Zuid. His father had moved from North Brabant and hired as a dock worker. On the streets of Südrotterdam he developed his unique ball technique while playing with friends of the same age. Even in elementary school he was nicknamed Puck because he was one of the smallest. At 15 he became a member of Feijenoord, at 19 the midfielder played for the first time in the first team of Feijenoord. This laid the foundation for his career, during which he would become "one of the greatest football players at Feijenoord and in the national team before the Second World War".

As a left half-forward , he was involved in the first successes of the Rotterdam ; in the first championship season in 1924 he was in the first team in some games when Kees Pijl was with the national team at the Olympic Games in Paris. These included the two decisive championship games on the Whitsun holidays (June 8th and 9th, 1924) against the Enschede sports club and against Be Quick Groningen . Rotterdam had to win both games; with two goals for a 2-0 win in Enschede , van Heel laid the foundation for the first Feijenoord title after being substituted on. He was then in the starting lineup against Groningen and was one of the best players in the 3-1 win. However, he did not get past regular Cor van der Velde and was therefore mostly used in the second team this and the following season. After van Heel had made a successful debut in the national team , however, van der Velde voluntarily gave up his "older rights" half-left in the storm and made sure that the younger one could take "his" position. When the Rotterdam team brought in their second championship title in 1928, the "left foot" was already part of the regular formation. By April 1940, he then celebrated three more championships and two cup wins with Feijenoord. For many years he was the team captain ; in 322 league games he scored 43 goals. In 1935 the club honored him by letting him lay the foundation stone for the new stadium, De Kuip . At the first game in de kuip , he was in the Rotterdam team against Beerschot in 1937 .

Van Heel was considered one of the best Dutch players of the 1930s. Contemporaries "praised his superior technique, which enabled him to decide many games more with an overview than with an effort." With his technical skills, he compensated for the fact that he was not very fast and that over the years he was increasingly handicapped by a damaged left knee. which he stressed as a pure "left foot". He could “bring short and long arch flanks to the man on request - with his left foot he gave them a precisely calculated spin so that the ball not only stayed out of reach of the jumping opponents, but also lost speed at exactly the right moment and landed gently on the head or feet of his teammate. ".

National team

Although van Heel usually only played in the second team at the club, the KNVB's selection committee noticed him and invited him to the national team for the first time in March 1925. In the 2-1 win against Germany , he was not used in Amsterdam . It was not until the following friendly in Zurich that he made his debut in Oranje on April 19, 1925 . The match was lost 4-1, but from now on he belonged to the Elftal tribe and took part in the Olympic Games in his own country with her in 1928 , which, despite reaching the final of the consolation round, were disappointing for the hosts. The strong midfielder, who had an excellent overview of the game, was at that time, as a 24-year-old, already a “figurehead of Feijenoord and rising star of Dutch football”. But in the 2-0 defeat in the opening match against Uruguay , his direct opponent José Leandro Andrade , undisputed best player in this and the previous tournament , showed the left half-forward his limits.

In 1932 van Heel was also the team captain of the national team for the first time, from the beginning of 1934 he did not give up the armband until the end of his international career. Accordingly, he also led the team at the World Cup in Italy in 1934 , when the knockout came in the round of 16 with a 2: 3 defeat against Switzerland . On May 2, 1937, he overtook Harry Dénis as a record international with 57 missions . At the 1938 World Cup in France , he and his team reached the round of 16; this time the Netherlands were eliminated with a 3-0 draw against Czechoslovakia . Then made van Heel on October 23, 1938 in Copenhagen in a 2-2 against Denmark his last international match; the captain's armband was taken over by Wim Anderiesen .

In total, van Heel made 64 games for the Netherlands - a record number that Ruud Krol only surpassed on May 22, 1979. He was not granted a goal in the national jersey.

After the active time

As a pure amateur athlete, van Heel had to earn his living while still active; he worked in a margarine factory, as a representative in the coal trade of a Feijenoord board member and as a tobacco merchant. After his playing days, he worked as a coach at several lower division clubs in the region, including Fortuna Vlaardingen , SSS Spijkenisse and Flakkee . Like many former football players, he became a cafeteria operator, his restaurants were in the Jonker Fransstraat in Rotterdam and the Bas Jungeriusstraat . From 1969 he retired from the public eye and lived modestly and simply in Rotterdam, where he died in 1984. In 1997 a street in Rotterdam was named after him.

successes

Web links

literature

  • Zeger van Herwaarden, Het Oranje W K-boek , De Arbeiderspers / Het Sporthuis, Amsterdam / Antwerp 2010, ISBN 978-90-295-7219-4 , p. 11ff .: Deel 1/1: Een wereld opent sich voor Puck van Heel
  • Mik Schots & Jan Luitzen, Tovenaars in Oranje . AW Bruna, Utrecht 2004, ISBN 90-229-8813-9 , pp. 79ff .: Puck van Heel (1904-1984) - De constante technicus

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Dé record internationals van Oranje ( Memento from June 27, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) at voetbalstats.nl
  2. ↑ a b C. Zevenbergen, Puck van Heel, 1904–1984 , obituary in the Rotterdams Jaarboekje , Reeks 09, Jaargang 03, 1985, p. 163 ff., Online version (PDF; 2.2 MB) viewed on December 14, 2008
  3. ↑ 1904–1984 Puck van Heel ( memento of February 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), on the IJsselmonde toen en nu website , viewed on December 14, 2008
  4. ^ Mik Schots & Jan Luitzen, Tovenaars in Oranje . AW Bruna, Utrecht 2004, ISBN 90-229-8813-9 , p. 80
  5. ^ HEEL, Gerardus Henricus van (1904-1984) , portrait at the Instituut voor Nederlandse Geschiedenis
  6. ^ Mik Schots & Jan Luitzen, Tovenaars in Oranje . AW Bruna, Utrecht 2004, ISBN 90-229-8813-9 , p. 81
  7. ↑ Zeger van Herwaarden, Het Oranje W K-boek , De Arbeiderspers / Het Sporthuis, Amsterdam / Antwerp 2010, ISBN 978-90-295-7219-4 , p. 16
  8. ↑ Copy of the decision of June 10, 1997 ( memento of August 4, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) in the administrative archive in Rotterdam, viewed on May 29, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Heel, puck van
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Heel, Gerardus Henricus van (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH January 21, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Rotterdam
DATE OF DEATH 18th December 1984
Place of death Rotterdam