Lars Leese
Lars Leese (2005)
Lars Leese ( born August 18, 1969) is a former professional soccer player on the goalkeeper position and current football coach.
Career as a youth player
Lars Leese began his football career in the youth of the SC Fortuna Köln before moving to the first FC Cologne. At 16, however, he stopped for a short time with the football because he lacked motivation. However, he later took only a few weeks training at BC Efferen on, but without the goal of becoming a professional footballer, as he in his time in Cologne had.
Career as a player
In 1989, Leese to Sportfreunde Neitersen in the county league Westerwald and from there in 1992 to VfB knowledge in the Oberliga West. With the VfB knowledge he succeeded in 1994 to qualify for the newly formed Regionalliga West / Southwest. After the descent of VfB in the summer of 1995, he joined the SCB Prussia Cologne in the Oberliga Nordrhein, before 04 Leverkusen went a year later to Bayer in the Bundesliga, where as the third goalkeeper but remained without Bundesliga use. In the summer of 1997 Leese went to England to Barnsley FC, the surprising rise in that year for the first time in the Premier League. He received his first deployment, when injured in the third home game of the regular goalkeeper. The highlight of his professional career was probably the game against Liverpool, where he recorded a 1-0 victory.
In Barnsley, he completed a total of 20 matches (1997/ 98: 8 games (1st League ) 1998/99: 8 games (2nd league), 4 League Cup games), before 1999, his contract expired. After he found no association for the 1999/2000 season he spent the 2000/01 season again in Prussia Cologne in the big leagues, then to switch to the amateurs of Borussia Mönchengladbach. After two years we went to the second team of the 1st FC Cologne, where he still graduated in the Regionalliga some games as team captain and was appointed as a substitute goalkeeper in the first team of Cologne in the winter of 2004. After the 2004/ 05 season he finished his football career.
Career as a coach
As of July 2005 Lars Leese trained for six years the SV Bergisch Gladbach 09, with which he ascended twice from the Middle Rhine League (sixth division) in the NRW-Liga. In June 2011, he finished his work in Bergisch Gladbach voluntarily because he wanted to train like a higher-class club. In October 2011, he was coach of the SSVg Velbert with which he ascended into the Regional League West for the first year of the NRW-Liga. After 18 months, he was released there in April 2013. Only a scant six months later, however, brought him the SSVg after the dismissal of Hans -Günter Bruns as coach back.
Leese operates an exceptional coach for an amateur effort to educate yourself. So he stayed at FC Barcelona and FC Valencia each week-long training course. Since May 2009 he has been in possession of the DFB Football Trainer License, the highest coaching qualification in Germany, which he would be entitled to exercise for Bundesliga teams.
"The Dream Keeper "
Lars Leese is a wider public, especially through the 2002 Kiepenheuer & Malevich published as a paperback book The Dream Keeper: The incredible story become a goalkeeper, he has co-authored with sports journalist Ronald Reng known. The book describes Leeses checkered career and tells the way of the county league on the Premier League back in the league. The story offers insight into the everyday business professional football, especially in England. The Dream Keeper was in Germany a bestseller and in the media often compared with Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby, although both works are stylistically very different. Similar to fever pitch in the 90s in England The dream keepers in Germany is regarded as the book that made socially acceptable football as a literary theme. In 2004, The Dream Keeper was the first foreign book ever in England with the Sports Book Award ( " Sports Book of the Year" ) award in the category Biography.