Rudolf Nafziger

Rudolf Nafziger
Personnel
birthday	August 11, 1945
place of birth	Gauting ,  Germany
date of death	July 13, 2008
Place of death	Gauting, Germany
position	Storm
Juniors
Years	station
0000-1961	TSV Gauting
1961-1964	FC Bayern Munich
Men's
Years	station	Games (goals) 1
1964-1968	FC Bayern Munich	125 (22)
1968-1970	FC St. Gallen	48 0(9)
1970-1972	Hannover 96	27 0(0)
1972-1975	LASK Linz	84 (10)
National team
Years	selection	Games (goals)
1965	Germany B	1 0(0)
1965	Germany	1 0(0)
1966	Germany U23	1 0(0)
1 Only league games are given.

Rudolf Nafziger (born August 11, 1945 in Gauting ; † July 13, 2008 there ), also known as "Rudi", was a German football player who rose to the Bundesliga with FC Bayern Munich in 1965 , and with him in 1966 and 1967 the DFB Cup , as well as won the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1967 . He also won the Swiss Cup in 1969 with FC St. Gallen .

1961–1968: FC Bayern Munich / national team

At the age of 16, Rudi Weiss, the youth sponsor of FC Bayern Munich, discovered Rudi Nafziger at TSV Gauting , a club in the Würmtal just outside Munich, and persuaded him to move. From the 1964/65 season he was a member of Bayern's first team, with which he initially played in the Regionalliga Süd . With Sturm Nafziger, Rainer Ohlhauser , Gerd Müller , Dieter Koulmann and Dieter Brenninger , the championship was won in 1965 with a goal difference of 146:32 goals. The 19-year-old talent on the right flank played all 36 games and contributed 12 hits. In the subsequent round of promotion to the Bundesliga , Bayern prevailed; Nafziger scored three goals in six games.

As a regional league player, the winger hope received an appointment by the DFB for the B national team . In addition to players like Franz Beckenbauer and Günter Netzer , he stormed the right wing on March 10, 1965 in a 1-1 draw against the Dutch national team in Hanover .

The pronounced wing game over Brenninger and Nafziger paid off thanks to the goalscorer Gerd Müller and Rainer Ohlhauser with a high hit rate. The success also continued in the Bundesliga: Nafziger, who was not only considered an elegant and skilled technician, but also “the first handsome guy in the Bundesliga” and played on the right wing, made 32 appearances in the 1965/66 season and scored ten Gates. FC Bayern Munich finished third and on June 4, 1966 also won the DFB Cup final against Meidericher SV 4-2.

Shortly after the start of his first Bundesliga season, he was at the age of just 20 years of national coach Helmut Schoen in the senior team appointed. On October 9, 1965, he and Lothar Ulsaß from Eintracht Braunschweig formed the right wing in the 4-1 success over the selection of Austria in Stuttgart .

The 1-1 draw of the U-23 national team on November 16, 1966 in Bucharest against the selection of Romania on the side of Gerd Müller and Jupp Heynckes should remain his last appearance in the national jersey.

By the end of the 1967/68 season , he had played another 57 Bundesliga matches for Bayern Munich, but he never scored a goal. One consolation should have been the successful title defense of the national club cup in 1967, this time with Hamburger SV as the final opponent and the win of the European Cup Winners' Cup in the same year through a 1-0 win after extra time over the Glasgow Rangers in Nuremberg . Nafziger acted as a right winger in each of the two finals.

For winning the European Cup he was awarded the Silver Laurel Leaf on December 3, 1967 with the entire Bayern team.

Within the club, however, he was increasingly questioned due to his lack of accuracy and players like Gustl Jung , who scored four goals in 21 appearances, questioned his place in the team. After the coach Zlatko Čajkovski , who was regarded as a supporter of Nafzigers, was replaced at the end of the 1967/68 season , it was time for Nafziger to say goodbye; for the 1968/69 season he signed a two-year contract with FC St. Gallen in Switzerland.

1968–1975: St. Gallen, Hanover and Linz

The FC St. Gallen , newly promoted to the first class at the time National League A , impressed in the league little and already increased after the season 1969/70 again. In 1969, however, FC St. Gallen made it to the final of the Swiss Cup , which was held in Bern's Wankdorf Stadium . Two goals by Nafziger in the second half to the 2-0 final against AC Bellinzona secured the St. Gallen team their only win in this competition so far.

After relegation, Nafziger returned to Germany and joined Hannover 96 . At the side of Hans Siemensmeyer he succeeded in 27 Bundesliga games, only six of them in his second season in the city of Leinestadt, not a single goal until the end of the 1971/72 season . Overall, the striker has remained without a goal in the last 87 Bundesliga games. His total record is 116 Bundesliga games with a total of ten goals.

After his second season in Hanover, he moved to Austria for the first division club LASK Linz and ended his playing career in 1975 after three seasons, barely 30 years old.

Last years in Gauting

After the end of his playing career, he settled back in Gauting. He liked fishing in the Würm , often played tennis and was otherwise active. In 2008 he died after a long illness just one month before his 63rd birthday on July 13th, a Sunday lunchtime, with his family. As early as 2007, he was too weak to come to a meeting for the 40th anniversary of the 1967 European Cup team at Nockherberg in Munich. Until recently, Rudi Nafziger was still in contact with numerous former team-mates. For example, his former team captain Werner Olk and other teammates visited him in the hospital just a few weeks before his death .

Nafziger's daughter Simone, his mother, the three older siblings and the president of FC Bayern Munich, Franz Beckenbauer, gave him the last escort . His former Bayern players, Peter Kupferschmidt , Dieter Brenninger and Adolf Kunstwadl also said goodbye to him when he was buried in the Gautinger cemetery.

"Rudi, we will not forget you, the super football player from Gauting," said the ex-president of FC Bayern Munich, Willi O. Hoffmann , who was also present, visibly moved.

Web links

• Rudolf Nafziger in the database of fussballdaten.de
• Rudolf Nafziger in the database of weltfussball.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Good friends , Thomas Hüetlin, Blessing Karl Verlag, 2006, ISBN 978-3-89667-254-4
2. ↑ Sports report of the Federal Government of September 29, 1973 to the Bundestag - BT-Drucksache 7/1040 - page 58 (pdf) accessed on February 15, 2007
3. ↑ Excerpts from the Cup final from 1969 ( Memento of the original from January 26th, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on srf.ch 
4. ↑ Player statistics (result via search function)
5. ↑ Article on merkur-online .de (Starnberger Merkur edition of July 18, 2008)

literature

• Jürgen Bitter : Germany's football. The encyclopedia. Sportverlag, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-328-00857-8 .
• Jürgen Bitter : Germany's national soccer player: the lexicon . SVB Sportverlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-328-00749-0 .
• 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 .
• 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 .