Willi Billmann

Willi Billmann (born January 15, 1911 in Nuremberg ; † July 5, 2001 ibid), also called "Billi", was a German soccer player for 1. FC Nürnberg who made 11 international appearances in the German national soccer team from 1937 to 1941 .

Career

societies

Willi Billmann joined 1. FC Nürnberg in 1929 from the workers' sports club TV Leonhard-Schweinau , where he started playing football at the age of 12. He first played in the reserve and was then to become the successor to the 30-year-old center runner Hans Kalb . In the 1931/32 season, the young defender stepped in for the injured calf in the main lineup. He made the breakthrough as a defender, on the left as well as on the right side of defense under coach Jenő Konrád . In this position he played as the successor to national defender Luitpold Popp .

He was enthusiastic about the coach Jenő Konrád at the time. He commented on the former star of MTK Budapest with the words: “I learned the most from him, Konrad was simply a brilliant footballer.” Konrad also built the young Richard Oehm and integrated him into the team. He thus initiated a rejuvenation of the trunk formation. In 1934 Willi Billmann moved into his first final of the German soccer championship with 1. FC Nürnberg . FC Schalke 04 prevailed with 2-1 goals after extra time against the "club" supervised by Alfréd Schaffer . Billmann suffered a fractured metacarpal in the final and only got through the encounter with severe pain. He was considered a "tough as iron" defender, which was not only aimed at the respective opponent. When the first German club cup was held in 1935, 1. FC Nürnberg won this trophy with a 2-0 win on December 8, 1935 in Düsseldorf against Schalke. Willi Billmann celebrated the first national title win. In the year of the Olympic Games in 1936 , the Nürnberger prevailed in the finals with successes against Worms, Jena and the Stuttgarter Kickers. With a 2-0 win in the semifinals against Schalke 04, the way to the final of the German soccer championship was prepared. With 2-1 goals after extra time, the Nuremberg team prevailed against Fortuna Düsseldorf . That was the sixth championship win for Nuremberg, the team from "Zabo". The duel between Billmann and the national left winger Stanislaus Kobierski from Fortuna Düsseldorf was one of the defining duels of the final. As the defending champions, the team around Carolin, Eiberger, Friedel, Gußner, Köhl and Munkert lost the final in 1937 with 0-2 goals against the Schalke “Knappen”. In the final, Billmann faced the strong left winger Adolf Urban . In the year of the soccer world championship in 1938 there were no finals. In the cup, the semifinals at SK Rapid Wien were the final destination. In the following year, the "Club" took revenge on Rapid and won the semi-finals with 1-0 goals in Vienna. In the final on April 28, 1940 in Berlin, against SV Waldhof Mannheim , captain Willi Billmann was able to lead his team to a 2-0 win against Otto Siffling's team . As a cup defender, Nuremberg again moved into the final in 1940, but lost in extra time with 1: 2 goals against Dresdner SC with Walter Dzur , Willibald Kress , Karl Miller and Helmut Schön . This ended the success story of the Noris association during the Second World War .

Initially Billmann played in the Paris soldier eleven ; in between back in Nuremberg. Then he was drafted to Berlin. There he played for a year at Hertha BSC . With 18 appearances, Willi Billmann is one of the players who played most often in the cup competition from 1935 to 1943 from the round of 16. At the beginning of 1945 he returned to Nuremberg, where he again ran for the "Club". After the war, Willi Billmann played 73 games for 1. FC Nürnberg in the Oberliga Süd from 1945 to 1949. As captain he celebrated the runner-up title in 1946 and the championship in the south in 1947 and 1948. Due to the consequences of a jaw fracture which he suffered on April 11, 1948 in the 1-0 win against Schweinfurt 05, he was unable to take part in the 1948 finals and only saw the German championship win on August 8 as a spectator. The last game in the Oberliga Süd played the defense strategist on October 31, 1948. He had participated as an active player from 1932 to 1944 in eight finals and had come to 38 missions. He played a total of 623 games for the "club". The camaraderie in his club, on the field and also privately, he described as unique. His son Jürgen Billmann played for 1. FC Nürnberg, Freiburg FC and SpVgg Fürth.

National team

At the age of 23, the 1. FC Nürnberg athlete made his debut in the Bavarian Gau selection on July 26, 1934 and attracted attention in further selection missions. Overall, he played for the Gau Bayern in ten games. On May 2, 1937, he made his debut for the ailing Paul Janes in Zurich in the German national football team in the game against Switzerland. He also took part as a right defender on May 12th in a test match against Manchester City, but at the latest after the 8-0 victory of the national team on May 16 in Breslau against Denmark, the birth of the " Breslau-Elf ", that was Defender couple with Paul Janes and Reinhold Münzenberg in the national team a constant. In the run-up to the 1938 World Cup in France, he came on March 20, 1938 in Nuremberg in a 1-1 draw against Hungary for his second appearance in the national team. He took part in the course before the international match on May 14 in Berlin against England in the Duisburg sports school, but was not nominated for the World Cup. The annexation of Austria had intensified the competitive situation for the defender position. Reich coach Sepp Herberger took the players Janes, Münzenberg, Streitle and Schmaus to the world championship.

After the tournament, the defender of 1. FC Nürnberg was in the squad for the international match on September 25, 1938 in Bucharest against Romania; but it was not used. At the "unofficial" international match against Bulgaria on October 2 in Sofia, he defended the position of right-back. From October 15, 1939 to April 7, 1940, he was in six international matches in a row in the national team. In five encounters he formed the defender pair with Paul Janes. With the eleventh mission on October 5, 1941 in Stockholm against Sweden - again at the side of Paul Janes - he ended his international career. For Hans Klodt and Helmut Schön, too , the Sweden game meant saying goodbye to the national team.

successes

• German champion 1936
• Tschammer Cup winner 1935 , 1939

Others

Professionally, he made it to the head of the appointments office in the machine and apparatus factory in Nuremberg at Siemens, where he worked for over 40 years.

Web links

• Willi Billmann in the database of weltfussball.de
• Willi Billmann in the database of the German Football Association
• Willi Billmann on glubberer.de

literature

• Jürgen Bitter : Germany's national soccer player: the lexicon . SVB Sportverlag, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-328-00749-0 .
• Werner Skrentny (Ed.): When Morlock still met the moonlight. The history of the Oberliga Süd 1945–1963. Klartext, Essen 1993, ISBN 3-88474-055-5 .
• LIBERO , No. D 14, D 16, D 17, Dt. Club cup / Gau selection games, IFFHS .