Weber, Heribert

Club career

Until his 18th birthday, Weber studied typing, and after that he took up football and became a player in the local Poels. In 1973, Heribert was noticed by representatives of the club from the top division , Sturm , and he became a full-fledged player in the team a year later. With a team from Graz in 1975, under the leadership of coach Karl Schlecht, he reached the final of the cup, and that year was marked by his first call to the national team . Schlecht went to the Rapid Vienna in January 1978, in the summer of that year, Weber joined his trainer.

As part of the green and white Weber, despite a small growth as a defender (180 cm), he soon became a base player and celebrated his first great success. From 1978 to 1989, the defender ( libero ) scored 39 goals in 315 league matches and won four championships with the Vienna team, the same number of triumphs were in the cup. Weber scored three goals in European competitions and was also a member of the team, which in the 1984/85 season, under the leadership of coach Otto Baric, reached the final of the Cup Winners' Cup . The final itself, held May 15, 1985 in Rotterdam , ended in a 1: 3 loss to Everton .

In 1989, as captain of Rapida, at the age of 34, Weber moved to Austria Salzburg . In Salzburg, Heribert Weber again performed under the guidance of coach Otto Baric, in 1994 the team became Austria's vice champion. In the 1993/94 season, he was 39 years old with the Salzburg Club for the second time in his career reaching the UEFA Cup final - the UEFA Cup . In both UEFA Cup finals against Internazionale , Austria lost with a minimum score, and in the second match the Austrians had to abandon several key players due to injuries and disqualifications ^[1] . After this season, the captain of "Austria" ended his career and became a coach.

In total, Heribert Weber played in 581 matches during his career and scored 57 goals, playing as a defender. He also played 63 matches in European competitions, where he scored 3 goals.

National Team

His debut in the national team took place on April 28, 1976, the match ended in victory with a minimum score over Sweden . Weber later became the team captain, having played 68 matches for the Austrian national team and scored one goal ^[2] . He also spent three games at the world championships 1978 and 1982 ^[3] , his last game in the team’s T-shirt was the qualifying match for the 1990 World Cup on October 25, 1989, he ended in defeat with a score of 0: 3 from the Turkish team in Istanbul .

After his career as a player, Weber became the coach of Pooh, with whom he flew out of the second league in the 1994/95 season. From 1995 to 1996, he was a coach of the youth (U-18 and U-19) teams of Austria, and then was offered to the post of coach of his former club, Austria Salzburg.

The team from Salzburg after the departure of many participants in European competitions and top players ( Pfeifenberger , Yurchevich, Fejersinger, Mladenovic , Artner, Fürstaller and Stadler) was going through a crisis. Weber understood the seriousness of the situation, so he strengthened the team with some new acquisitions to form a new team, and sensationally won the champion title in the 1996/97 season with Austria Salzburg. However, in the semifinal of the cup, his team lost in the series of penalty shoot-outs to the Vienna “ First ”. In the 1997/98 season, the club from Salzburg could not defend the champion’s title, and in the Champions League qualification the team lost to Sparta from Prague due to a weak away game. Nevertheless, Weber made himself a good coach because he won the title last year, and the Rapid sports director invited him to replace Ernst Dokupil at the helm of the team in May 1998.

In the first season of Weber with Rapid, the team finished second in the championship after Sturm Graz. The contract with the club was calculated until May 30, 2000, then Weber coached the club for almost a year and a half from the second division of Germany , Saarbrücken . In July 2003, Weber was appointed coach of the Untersiebenbrunn team, with whom he won the first league in Austria in the fall of 2003. After the contract with the club, Heribert Weber worked on television with Sky Deutschland as a football expert and was broadcast once a week on the radio as part of the football program.

From August 1, 2008 until the summer of 2010, Heribert Weber worked as the sports director of Admira Wacker (Mödling).

• Rapid stats - Rapid Archiv
• Career stats - National Football Teams