Rüdiger Wenzel

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Rüdiger Wenzel
Personnel
birthday June 3, 1953
place of birth Lübeck ,  Germany
size 1.81 m
Juniors
Years station
VfB Lübeck
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1971-1974 VfB Lübeck 99 (31)
1974-1975 FC St. Pauli 37 (24)
1975-1979 Eintracht Frankfurt 130 (51)
1979-1984 Fortuna Dusseldorf 143 (26)
1984-1990 FC St. Pauli 159 (62)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
1977-1979 Germany B 5 0(1)
1 Only league games are given.

Rüdiger "Sonny" Wenzel (born June 3, 1953 in Lübeck ) is a former German soccer player who made 300 appearances with 91 goals in the Bundesliga between 1975 and 1990.

career

Beginning in the north, until 1975

The father of the native Lübeck, Karl Wenzel , had scored 31 goals in 70 league games from 1947 to 1950 in the soccer Oberliga Nord . Wenzel came directly from the A-youth in the 1971-72 season in the contract player team of Werder from the Lohmühle , of the Regionalliga Nord gambling VfB Lübeck . Trainer Kurt Krause introduced the offensive talent at the side of Siegfried Bronnert and Hans-Jürgen Wittfoht to the stress of the second class at the time. On the second match day, the 18-year-old attacker made his debut in the 1-0 home win against Police Bremen in the league team of "Jockel" Krause. In the 2-2 draw on September 12th in Itzehoe, he entered the goalscorer list for the first time, he scored both goals for VfB. The first derby against the city rivals of Phoenix  - with coach Emil Izsó and goalkeeper Gert Girschkowski  - experienced the striker's hope on October 17, 1971 with a narrow 1-0 home win. In Rüdiger Wenzel's first two years in contract football, VfB Lübeck was sixth in the Regionalliga Nord. In the last year of the league, 1973/74, VfB landed in 16th place and "Sonny" accepted the offer from St. Pauli and moved to the 2nd Bundesliga for the 1974/75 round for 19,000 DM in Hamburg . In the meantime, trainer Krause worked at Millerntor and significantly pushed the personnel of Rüdiger Wenzel. Krause was right, Wenzel completed 37 point games and immediately scored 24 goals for St. Pauli. This placed him behind Volker Graul and Gerd-Volker Schock in third place on the top scorer list in the 2nd Bundesliga Group North. In cooperation with Heino Hansen , Rolf Höfert , Horst Neumann , Reinhard Rietzke and Horst Wohlers , the St. Pauli took third place in the table, one point behind Bayer Uerdingen . Uerdingen prevailed in the relegation games against FK Pirmasens from the southern group and rose to the Bundesliga. The DFB Cup defender of the year 1975, Eintracht Frankfurt , signed "Sonny" Wenzel for 440,000 DM for the 1975/76 round and with that he also came to the Bundesliga five years after his brother Horst, who was nine years older than him, where he worked for Arminia from 1970 to 1972 Bielefeld had played 40 games.

Bundesliga in the south and west, 1975 to 1984

In his first year at Eintracht Frankfurt, coach Dietrich Weise was the sporting director of the men around Jürgen Grabowski , Bernd Hölzenbein and Bernd Nickel , "Sonny" Wenzel made 33 appearances in 1975/76 and scored thirteen goals. In the European Cup Winners' Cup , he was in all eight matches against FC Coleraine, Atlético Madrid , Sturm Graz and West Ham United for Hessen. The man from Lübeck and St. Pauli learned more in daily training through the quality of the Eintracht players and the additional requirements of the European Cup and was at the end of the 1976/77 round, in June 1977, on a trip to Central and North America three times from DFB appointed to the B national team. He did not experience continuity in the coaching position at Eintracht. After Weise followed in four rounds until 1979 , five more instructors: Hans-Dieter Roos , Gyula Lóránt , Dettmar Cramer , Otto Knefler and Friedel Rausch . In the 1976/77 series - under coach Lorant he got to know the area coverage system - Wenzel set his personal record with 20 goals in the Bundesliga, which together with Horst Hrubesch and Benny Wendt took seventh place in the top scorer list. He showed an outstanding performance on January 29, 1977, when he scored all goals in Frankfurt's 4-0 win against 1. FC Köln and managed one of the fastest hat tricks in Bundesliga history between the 68th and 76th minute. In the 1977/78 season "Sonny" Wenzel played his fourth and fifth international B game. After the round of 1978/79 - Frankfurt came in fifth place - Rüdiger Wenzel said goodbye with 130 games and 51 goals in the Bundesliga, 18 DFB Cup games with eleven goals and 14 European Cup appearances with four goals from Frankfurt and switched to football West to the DFB Cup winner of the year 1979, to Fortuna Düsseldorf .

With Fortuna he won the DFB-Pokal on June 4, 1980 in Gelsenkirchen with 2-1 goals against Cologne, where he succeeded in the 59th minute of the game to the meanwhile 1-1 equalizer. In the European Cup he failed with Fortuna 1979/80 in the first round at Glasgow Rangers and in 1980/81 the player , which had meanwhile developed into an all-rounder, was in all six matches against Austria Salzburg, Thor Waterschei and Benfica Lisbon in the cup winners' competition. After five rounds, Rüdiger Wenzel had played 143 Bundesliga games with 36 goals and 17 cup games with 7 goals for Düsseldorf. Coach Willibert Kremer played for Wenzel for the last time in the Bundesliga on March 31, 1984 in the 2-0 defeat at Bayer 04 Leverkusen . "Sonny" was part of the Fortuna team with Wolfgang Kleff , Manfred Bockenfeld , Rudi Bommer , Atli Eðvaldsson and Gerd Zewe . In Düsseldorf, too, Wenzel had five coaches with their different views and guidelines in five rounds with Hans-Dieterippenhauer , Otto Rehhagel , Heinz Höher , Jörg Berger and Kremer. For the round 1984/85 he returned to St. Pauli and played in the 2nd Bundesliga. Last but not least, the “St. Pauli flair” prompted him to return, which he expressed in the 2002 book by Rene Martens with the following words:

“It impressed me as early as the seventies that the audience didn’t take away a defeat if you sold them hard work beforehand. And this contact with the fans, which was at least until the end of my time, was very much in keeping with my style.

Back at St. Pauli, 1984 to 1990

"Sonny" played 1984/85 together with Dietmar Demuth , André Golke , Jürgen Gronau , Joachim Philipkowski and Stefan Studer for the Millerntorelf. He played 36 games and scored twelve goals. As seventeenth in the table, St. Pauli was relegated to the amateur camp. The team stayed together, celebrated the championship, to which Wenzel contributed 23 goals, and via the promotion round, the immediate return to the 2nd Bundesliga. During the 1986 summer break, Wenzel, who at that time was working as a freelance businessman alongside football, was elected to the post of captain. The climber took third place in 1986/87. In the second year after his return, in 1987/88 , the 34-year-old Wenzel played 32 games and contributed 16 hits to the runner-up and direct promotion to the Bundesliga. In total, Rüdiger Wenzel played 137 games with 59 goals in the 2nd Bundesliga. The three seasons in the Regionalliga Nord with VfB Lübeck from 1971 to 1974, which also represented the second division in the class division at that time, are not taken into account. In the first division he tied two rounds with 27 games and four goals for the team of coach Helmut Schulte . He also had to cope with a bad broken leg and only played the first game for the promoted team on the 15th matchday in 1988/89. He was substituted on November 19, 1988 in the 64th minute of play and scored the winning goal in 75th minute to make it 2-1 against Waldhof Mannheim. His last Bundesliga appearance resulted from the encounter on April 20, 1990 at Bayer Uerdingen when he came on for Ivo Knoflíček in the 71st minute in the 1-0 defeat. For St. Pauli he also made seven appearances in the DFB Cup between 1985 and 1989, in which he scored three goals.

Next to the square

"Sonny" Wenzel's goal for the 1-0 lead on March 23, 1989 at the home game against Hamburger SV in the second minute of the game was voted goal of the month. After the 1989/90 round he ended his career at the age of 37, moved to Schleswig-Holstein and devoted himself to a stationery shop in Bad Segeberg .

literature

  • Rene Martens: Miracles always happen. The history of FC St. Pauli ; Verlag Die Werkstatt, 2002; ISBN 3-89533-375-1
  • Hardy Greens : Legendary football clubs. Northern Germany. Between TSV Achim, Hamburger SV and TuS Zeven. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2004, ISBN 3-89784-223-8 .
  • 25 years 2nd division ; AGON Sportverlag, 2000; ISBN 3-89784145-2
  • Matthias Weinrich: Encyclopedia of German League Football. Volume 3: 35 years of the Bundesliga. Part 1. The founding years 1963–1975. Stories, pictures, constellations, tables. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 1998, ISBN 3-89784-132-0 .
  • 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 .
  • Matthias Kropp: Triumphs in the European Cup. All games of the German clubs since 1955 (= "AGON Sportverlag statistics." Volume 20). AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 1996, ISBN 3-928562-75-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Matthias Arnhold: Rüdiger Wenzel - Matches and Goals in Bundesliga . Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation. September 4, 2014. Retrieved September 30, 2014.
  2. ↑ The eleven regular players - their strengths, their weaknesses   . In: Hamburger Abendblatt . No. 168 , July 23, 1986, pp. 14 ( abendblatt.de [PDF; 2.2 MB ; accessed on May 18, 2020]).
personal data
SURNAME Wenzel, Rudiger
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wenzel, Sonny (nickname)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1953
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck