Leopold Gernhardt

Leopold " Poldy " Gernhardt ( born March 16, 1920 in Vienna, † April 18, 2013 ) was an Austrian football player and coach.

Club career

Gernhardt began playing football at ASK Graphia and was taken by his friend Hermann Dvoracek for training the next generation Rapid, where he struck the coach Leopold Nitsch and soon joined the club. His debut in the first team he gave in September 1939, where he equally indebted to the Vienna an own goal. In his first two seasons of the versatile players came to just five appearances in the Gaumeisterschaft, but slipped just in the final round of the German Championship due to an injury of -budgetary funds runner Johann Hofstätter in the first team. Gernhardt denied all the other games of the competition, reaching the Hütteldorfern the final against FC Schalke 04, where he saved the score at 1:3 a ball on the goal line and was finally able to celebrate with his team a 4-3 victory.

From this point, the combative players had secured a regular place in the Green-Whites, where he was on the right side mainly used. In the first post-war season, he won the Double Rapid, where he played mostly in the rotor row next to Franz Wagner and Franz Kaspirek. Even with its new addition to people Gerhard Hanappi and Franz Golobic from what had become the captain ascended runners successfully and got four more league titles before he ended his active career in 1954.

National

Gernhardt debuted in the national team in August 1945 in the first international match after the war against the Hungarians as the right half. In the following years he was a fixture in the national team. Due to its versatility, he came to no less than five positions used, including several times as a center forward. In the summer of 1948 he was in the squad for the Olympic Games, but was not the sole competition game of the Austrians used. Frequently he made with Hanappi and Ernst Ocwirk the runners number of Austrians, before he finally completed his last appearances for the national team as a right connector. His last game was a 2-0 win over Belgium in March 1952.

Coaching career

Immediately after the end of his playing career moved Gernhardt to the position of head of section at Rapid. When the contract with the coach Viktor Hierländer was completed in the spring of 1955, he took over as coach on an interim basis and until season's end. In the fall of 1955, he finished his career at Rapid.

After 1958 he was briefly been coach of SC Wacker Wien, Gernhardt took over in September 1960 as coach at the Vienna, which he supervised two seasons long. Then coach stations followed at FC Lustenau 07 in 1962/ 63 and the SK Austria Klagenfurt in the season 1963/64.

1965 Gernhardt was part of the backroom team of the OFB, where he was responsible for the youth teams and was initially under Leopold Šťastný assistant coach of the national team. Even after that he continued to work for the OFB, for example as a game observer at the World Cup 1978.

Achievements

  • 7 × Austrian Champion: 1940, 1941, 1946, 1948, 1951, 1952, 1954
  • 1 × OFB - Winners' Cup: 1946
  • 1 × German champion: 1941
  • 27 games for the Austrian national team
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