Knöpfle, Georg

Knöpfle was born in 1904 in the family of Matthias Knöpfle (1871-1962) and Christina Hes (1872-1942) in Schramberg . He was the fourth child of seven children in the family. From 1910 to 1918, he studied at a local high school, after which he studied the profession of mechanic and worked at the Junghans watch factory until 1925. Here, starting from the age of nine, Georg began to get involved in football and played for the youth team of Schramberg 08 .

On April 17, 1926, Knöpfle moved to Fürth and joined the Greater team, which was then headed by William Townley . In June of that year, he and the club managed to win the national championship . Knöpfle’s position in the squad was unstable, but after some time playing for the backup team he managed to take on leading roles in the club ^[1] .

Georg could play both on the right and on the left flank of the midfield and had outstanding speed qualities, which prompted the German national team coach Otto Nerz to challenge him to a match with the Swiss team, which took place on April 15, 1928 in Bern and ended with a score of 3: 2 in favor guests. After several test games with English and Scottish professional clubs, Knöpfle was included in the application for participation in the 1928 Olympic Games in Amsterdam . At the Olympics, George played in two matches against the national teams of Switzerland and Uruguay in the position of the right midfielder.

Soon after this tournament, Knöpfle moved to the Frankfurt club, which had problems in the local championship due to the strengthening of the local Eintracht . In 1932, they managed to win the South German championship by defeating in the final match of “ Munich 1860 ” with a score of 1: 0. Knepple himself scored the only goal in this game. The following year, Frankfurt was declared in the newly formed Gauligu “South-West” , but George chose to end his professional career. To this day, he remains the owner of the largest number of games for the German national team as a player of Frankfurt ^[2] .

During his performances for Frankfurt, Kneopfle entered the Higher School of Physical Education in Berlin and graduated with a degree in football coach. For three months in the summer of 1932, he trained at the Victoria Hamburg ^[3] , and after a serious injury and the completion of his player’s career, he managed to get into the coaching staff of the German national team and participate in the preparations for the 1936 Olympics . After that, he was appointed director of the Braunschweig Higher School of Teacher Education , and then head of the Physical Education Department of the Braunschweig Technical University . At the same time, he coached the local Eintracht .

During World War II, Knöpfle continued to lead Eintracht and, in the early forties, acted as the team's playing coach. He was also involved in Nerts as an assistant during the preparation of the national team. In 1948, after 11 years in Braunschweig, he transferred to the Hannover team “ Arminia ”. Knöpfle later coached the clubs Hamburg , Bayern (the only club from which he was fired), Alemania ( Aachen ).

Since 1958, he coached the Bremen Werder Bremen and won with him in 1961 the first German cup in the history of the club. The following year, Werder Bremen participated in the Cup Winners' Cup , where they reached the quarterfinals, defeating the Danish Aarhus , but lost to the future winner Atletico Madrid in two matches 2: 4 (1: 1; 1: 3).

In 1963, Knöpfle moved to Cologne , which then included future club legends Wolfgang Overath and Wolfgang Weber , and immediately won the newly formed Bundesliga . In the Champions Cup, he lost at the quarter-finals to Liverpool by draw, because both the match and the replay ended in a draw. In 1966, Knöpfle returned to Hamburg and became the first sports director in the history of the Bundesliga . After that, he led the team for a while, and then moved to Mayendorfer , where he completed his coaching career in 1971.

Knepple was also married to a native of Schramberg, Laura Aber (1905-2003), from whom he had two daughters and a son. In 1987, at the age of 83, he died of a heart attack in Hamburg .

In 2004, the first Knepple club Schramberg 08 named his own stadium in his honor ^[4] .

• Profile on fussballdaten.de (German) . fussballdaten.de.
• Profile at national-football-teams.com . national-football-teams.com.
• Profile on transfermarkt.de (German) . transfermarkt.de.
• Profile at weltfussball.de (German) . weltfussball.de.