William Townley

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William Townley
WilliamTownley.jpg
Personnel
Surname William James Townley
birthday February 14, 1866
place of birth Blackburn ,  England
date of death May 30, 1950
Place of death Blackpool , England
position Winger
Juniors
Years station
Blackburn Junior Football
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
Blackburn Swifts
0000-1886 Blackburn Olympic
1886-1892 Blackburn Rovers 77 (27)
1892-1893 Stockton FC
1893-1894 Blackburn Rovers 20 (10)
1894-1896 FC Darwen 42 (15)
1896-1897 Manchester City 3 0(0)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
1889-1890 England 2 0(2)
Stations as a trainer
Years station
1908-1909 DFC Prague
1909-1911 Karlsruhe FV
1911-1913 SpVgg Fürth
1913-1914 FA Bayern in the Munich SC
1914 SpVgg Fürth
1914 FA Bayern in the Munich SC
1919-1921 TuSpV Bayern
1920 FC St. Gallen
1921 SV Waldhof Mannheim
1921-1923 SC Victoria Hamburg
1923-1925 FC St. Gallen
1923 FC Konstanz
1924 Netherlands
1925-1926 SV St. Georg
1926-1927 SpVgg Fürth
1927-1928 FSV Frankfurt
1928-1929 FC Union Niederrad 07
1929-1930 SV Darmstadt 98
1930-1932 SpVgg Fürth
1932-1933 SV Arminia Hanover
1933– Eintracht Hannover
unconfirmed: Stay in Sweden
1 Only league games are given.

William James Townley (born February 14, 1866 in Blackburn , † May 30, 1950 in Blackpool ) was an English football player and coach . He was the first player in the history of the FA Cup to score three goals in a final. He later made a name for himself in German football history in the early 20th century as a pioneer in coaching at numerous clubs and led the Karlsruhe FV and SpVgg Fürth to a total of three German championships.

Player career

Townley in 1890

Townley, who was born and raised in the cotton city of Blackburn, north of Manchester, first came into contact with football as a public school student . Townley began his club career with the Blackburn Swifts and Blackburn Olympic , before he joined the Blackburn Rovers in 1886 , which at the time was one of the best English - and thus the world's best - football teams. He played mainly in the position of the left winger , won the FA Cup in 1890 and 1891 and contributed three goals in his first final to the 6-1 win over The Wednesday , today's Sheffield Wednesday, which no other player had before was. He was also able to score a goal in defending his title the following year when Notts County was defeated 3-1. This record of four goals in FA Cup finals was only exceeded in the 1980s by Ian Rush , who, however, needed three finals.

In the years 1889 and 1890 Townley completed two international matches for the English national team and was able to achieve two goals. In 1892 he moved for a year to the Stockton Football and Athletics Company , commonly known as Stockton FC , which played in the semi-professional Northern Football League . The outing was unsuccessful when Stockton was only fifth in the six-team league. So Townley returned to the Rovers for the 1893/94 season and continued his career after another season with relegated Darwen FC in the Second Division with which he was sixth and ninth. In 1896 he moved to Manchester City FC , which was also second-rate at the time , where he had to end his career as a football player in 1897 due to a serious head injury.

Coaching career

At the end of his playing career, he began to train football teams professionally, whereby he had already been interested in the theoretical elements of the football game and he was taught the necessary pedagogical knowledge in his teacher training. According to the current state of knowledge, it is not certain whether Townley was officially a coach in England.

Probably because the competition for the comparatively few coaching positions was great in England, Townley relocated his field of activity to mainland Europe, where football was only just beginning to establish itself in earnest. Targeted training to promote individual skills or a tactical orientation was still unusual at this time, even at top clubs; the line-up was determined by the team captain or, if available, a game committee.

Beginnings and first successes in Germany

Townley's first coaching station was the German Football Club Prague , a club founded by German Bohemians that had already played in the final of the first German championship in 1903. At that time, Prague was one of the strongholds of the "English running ball game" on the continent, which was probably due to numerous appearances by English clubs. Townley probably found this way to the Bohemian metropolis, where he first appeared as a coach in 1908.

Townley (top row on the right) with the championship team of the Karlsruher FV 1910

From January 17, 1909, he took over the training at the southern German top club Karlsruher FV . The southern champion of the years 1901 to 1905 , who in 1905 had already been in the final of the German championship , was in a crisis before Townley took office, for which poor training was primarily blamed. Townley formed a formidable team around players like Max Breunig , Fritz Förderer and Gottfried Fuchs and in 1910 won the first and only championship title in the history of the KFV with a 1-0 victory after extra time against Holstein Kiel . In addition, he directed his tactical guidelines - “stop, watch, pass” - which took the Scottish flat passing game as a model, right down to the youth areas of the club. He followed this principle on his other coaching stations.

The club management of the KFV renounced the services of Townley in 1911, since the financial outlay in view of the later rather low training participation of the players seemed no longer worthwhile. However, he was signed again for a short time in 1912 for the final of the German championship.

Establishment of the golden era of SpVgg Fürth

On April 8, 1911 it was decided at an extraordinary general meeting of the Franconian club SpVgg Fürth to sign the English coach. The club had one of the most advanced facilities in imperial Germany, the Ronhof, and with around 3,000 members was one of the largest clubs in the country. Townley led the club to its first two Bavarian championships, which at the time were known as the "Eastern District Championship", thus establishing the club's "golden era", which lasted into the 1930s.

In December 1913, would oblige him Bayern Munich (under the name "FA Bayern Munich in SC" in the 1906 Munich SC was incorporated), from which he returned in April of the following year on a kind of loan to Fuerth. With the Franks he penetrated into the final of the German championship in 1914 and won in Magdeburg against the record champions, the three-time champions VfB Leipzig , 3-2 in overtime with a goal in the 153rd minute. The team with highly respectable players like Hans "Bumbes" Schmidt , Georg Wellhöfer , Karl Franz and the Hungarian Frigyes Weicz brought the first German championship to Fürth and also to Bavaria .

Then he moved back to Munich. When the First World War was announced, Townley left Germany temporarily because he feared capture in Germany - a real danger, as Steve Bloomer , for example , had to learn, who was interned as the coach of a Berlin club.

Years of wandering after the war

After the war he trained again for FC Bayern Munich, which had formed the TuSpV Bayern with the Jahn gymnastics club since 1919 , and won several regional titles there. In August 1920 he moved for a few weeks to the Swiss club FC St. Gallen , which in those years had a sports friendship with the Munich club, and looked after the team there in a kind of summer training camp. During his two terms in office at Bayern Munich, Townley worked with the Bavarian President Kurt Landauer , who himself was to lead the club in 1932 with the Austrian Richard Dombi - who later became the successful coach of Feyenoord Rotterdam - to the first championship in the club's history.

Townley then moved to SV Waldhof Mannheim in January 1921 , which he was supposed to prepare for the 1921 South German championship finals. SV Waldhof was then only defeated by the reigning champions on the way to successfully defending their title, 1. FC Nürnberg . The club was in turn looked after by the equally important Hungarian coach Izidor Kürschner , who also worked for FC Bayern Munich at short notice during those years.

In the following period he was possibly also active in Sweden , but no concrete evidence can be found. The next trace of Townley can be found from March 1921 at SC Victoria Hamburg , where he spent a little more than two seasons and also had his son Jimmy Townley used in the forward position. Hamburg and Munich newspapers named “a salary of M 800.00 per week, taking a benefit game and getting and furnishing a four-room apartment” as Townley's alleged conditions for a two-year contract. The trainer “should consider letting his family come to Germany from England. In this case he would also be 18 years old. Son, who has a good reputation in England as a first-class striker, will move to Hamburg and work here for Viktoria's (sic!) Colors. "

In 1923 Townley returned to St. Gallen via Groningen , where he was to stay until February 1925. In this context, it is also interesting that St. Gallen had already employed Jack Reynolds , an English coach, at the beginning of the 1910s, who later moved to Amsterdam and made Ajax one of the leading clubs in the Netherlands .

After he had also looked after FC Konstanz on a part-time basis in 1923 , Townley interrupted his coaching job in Switzerland for four months and took part with the Dutch national team in the 1924 Olympic football tournament in Paris . There he and his team lost 2-1 in the semi-finals against what was probably the world's best team from Uruguay at the time - with players like José Leandro Andrade and Pedro Cea - and ultimately had to be content with fourth place - after all, the greatest success for 50 years Dutchman. At this tournament, the Swiss national team also celebrated their greatest triumph to date by winning the silver medal, and their coaching triumvirate again included the aforementioned Izidor Kürschner.

New success with Fürth

From St. Gallen (see above) Townley went back to Hamburg and took over SV St. Georg with limited success . In May 1926 he was recruited again by SpVgg Fürth and immediately won the German championship in 1925/26 with a clear 4-1 win over Hertha BSC in the final in Frankfurt and thus the second championship title in club history, which was the third for Townley. The national players Hans Hagen , Leonhard "Lony" Seiderer and Andreas Franz were among the stars of this championship team. After winning the South German championship in 1927, he stayed with the game association until September of that year.

Next he was found at FSV Frankfurt . There he replaced his compatriot William Stanton on November 1, 1927 . The FSV's game system at the time was largely based on strength and endurance, so that the Bornheimers initially couldn't cope with the sudden change to the filigree and fluid combination game, as Townley taught, and due to the defeat in the first game under Townley against Sport in 1860 Hanau also burst all championship dreams on the Bornheimer slope. In 1928 Townley moved to the other side of the Main for FC Union Niederrad 07 , which from that time was able to establish itself temporarily as number three in Frankfurt. However, financial bottlenecks forced the Frankfurt suburbs to end their engagement after 15 months. In the 1929/30 season , Townley trained a few kilometers further with SV Darmstadt 98, which is also in the Main / Hessen district class .

In the meantime, SpVgg Fürth had won their third German championship. Under the team of players and coaches Hans "Urbel" Krauss and Andreas Franz , the Franks won the final of 1929 against Berlin Hertha 3-2. The “kicker” commented the time as follows: The secret (...) is and remains the legacy of the brilliant Englishman William Townley; Fürth's system is still the wonderful creation of the old Blackburn rover man, who once before the war instilled the subtleties of football in the Fürth people so firmly that they have not yet forgotten it on the fertile Nuremberg-Fürth soil. (Spelling as in the original)

The so-praised returned to Fürth in September 1930 and won the South German championship again with the “Kleeblättlern” in the 1930/31 season. In the race for the German championship, however, defending champion Fürth lost 3-1 in the quarter-finals against current defending champion Hertha BSC in the Poststadion of the Reich capital. In 1932 the game association could not qualify for the championship finals and Townley said goodbye to the Franks for the last time in March.

Townley then worked for SV Arminia Hannover . He joined the club in 1932 and beat Dresdner SC with the Lower Saxony in the round of 16 , but then lost in the next round 3-0 in his own place against the eventual champions Fortuna Düsseldorf , in whose ranks the legendary Paul Janes was. This time was to be the most successful period in the history of Arminia Hannover. Townley was already active for Eintracht Hannover a year later . It was also Townley's last traceable coaching position. Townley died in Blackpool on May 30, 1950 at the age of 84 .

Sporting successes

Record as national coach of the Netherlands

In his tenure from March 23, 1924 to June 9, 1924 , he coached the Dutch national team in eight international matches, two of which were won and three lost; three ended in a draw.

Honors

Near the Ronhof sports park in Fürth , the William-Townley-Weg has been named after him since November 2019 .

literature

  • Hardy Greens: William J. Townley. The Englishman who shaped the “southern German style”. In: Dietrich Schulze-Marmeling (ed.): Strategists of the game. The legendary soccer coach. Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89533-475-8 , pp. 46–53.
  • Joyce, Michael: Football League Players' Records. 1888 to 1939. 4Edge, 2004, ISBN 1-899468-67-6 , pp. 262 .
  • A piece of German football history - 125 years of KFV. Karlsruhe football club, Karlsruhe 2016.

Web links

Commons : William Townley  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ England Players - Bill Townley , englandfootballonline.com.
  2. ↑ 90 years of the Karlsruhe football club. Festschrift. Karlsruhe 1981, p. 195.
  3. ↑ The shamrocks. 75 years of the Spielvereinigung Fürth , Dasbach Verlag, Taunusstein 1978, p. 7.
  4. ↑ Quoted from: Kampf. Illustrated Saxon Sports Weekly, No. 8 of February 23, 1921, p. 15.
  5. ↑ Het Sportblad describes him on January 25, 1923 on page 14 as the “new Be Quick trainer”.
  6. ↑ Note in sports. No. 21, Munich 1947, p. 14; see also the history of FC Konstanz ( Memento from April 17, 2009 in the Internet Archive ), fc-konstanz.de.
  7. ^ Letter from Paul Sternberg to the editors of the Sport-Chronik from August 1925: "I wanted to inform you that we have committed Townley to another year"; Page 7 of issue no. (…, Unclear, edge of the title page cut off). This is followed by match reports, for example in No. 9 of March 2, 1926, pages 13 et seq .: "The Englishman (...) has been working at St. George for a considerable number of months."
  8. ↑ Harald Schock, Christian Hinkel: Ein Jahrhundert FSV Frankfurt 1899 eV Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-89784-189-4 , p. 41.
  9. ↑ Hardy Greens : Legendary Football Clubs. Hesse. Between FC Alsbach, Eintracht Frankfurt and Tuspo Ziegenhain. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-89784-244-0 , p. 284.
  10. ↑ Hardy Greens: Legendary Football Clubs. Hesse. Between FC Alsbach, Eintracht Frankfurt and Tuspo Ziegenhain. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-89784-244-0 , p. 187.
  11. ↑ Der kicker , August 6, 1929.
  12. ↑ Hardy Greens : Legendary Football Clubs. Northern Germany. Between TSV Achim, Hamburger SV and TuS Zeven. AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2004, ISBN 3-89784-223-8 , p. 306.
  13. ^ Dutch National Team Coaches , rsssf.com.
  14. ↑ SpVgg master trainer Townley is now devoted to a path on nordbayern.de from November 12, 2019; accessed on November 21, 2019
personal data
SURNAME Townley, William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Townley, William James
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English soccer player and soccer coach
DATE OF BIRTH February 14, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Blackburn
DATE OF DEATH May 30, 1950
Place of death Blackpool