Bert Trautmann

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bert Trautmann
Personal information
Full name Bernhard Carl Trautmann
Date of birth October 22, 1923 (age 83)
Place of birth    Bremen, Germany
Playing position Goalkeeper
Club information
Current club retired
Senior clubs1
Years Club App (Gls)*
1949-1964 Manchester City F.C. 545   
National team2
Germany

1 Senior club appearances and goals
counted for the domestic league only and
correct as of 2005.
2 National team caps and goals correct
as of 2005.
* Appearances (Goals)

Bernhard Carl "Bert" Trautmann OBE (born October 22, 1923 in Bremen, Germany) is a German football goalkeeper who played for Manchester City from 1949 to 1964.

Contents

[edit] Biography

[edit] Youth in Germany

Trautmann was born in Bremen, where he spent his childhood and youth until 1941, when he had to start his military service. At the age of 10, he joined the football club Tura Bremen, where he played as left midfielder during the early years.

[edit] World War II: English POW

In the Second World War he was a paratrooper in western Russia. He was captured by the Russians and escaped, but was finally captured by the British. The English greeted him with the words "Hello Fritz, fancy a cup of tea?". He was brought to POW Camp 50 (on the site of the present Byrchall High School) at Ashton-in-Makerfield, in between St Helens and Wigan, before being transferred to a similar camp in Huyton, near Liverpool . In football matches between two camps he always played on the right midfield, but one day they had no goalkeeper and so Bert tried it and performed very well. It was during this time he became known as 'Bert,' as the English had trouble pronouncing 'Bernd,' the abbreviated version of his name.

[edit] A difficult start

After the war he stayed in Britain and played for the Liverpool County Combination club St Helens Town. During a friendly match against Manchester City, club officials were so impressed by him that they signed him to a lucrative contract. The fans of City, however, were not happy about having a former member of the Luftwaffe on the team. Season ticket holders threatened a boycott and various groups in Manchester and around the country bombarded the club with protest letters. Twenty thousand people demonstrated against the signing, holding banners like "Off with the German". Besides the issues with his nationality, Trautmann also was replacing Frank Swift, one of the greatest keepers in the club's history. After his first matches for City, however, the protests died when the fans discovered his talent.

[edit] Golden years with Manchester City

In the years to come, Trautmann established himself as one of the best keepers in the league, and very possibly, in the world.[citation needed] One of Bert Trautmann's greatest matches was the legendary 1956 FA Cup Final between Manchester City and Birmingham City at Wembley Stadium. In the 75th minute Man City led 3:1 and Trautmann, diving at an incoming ball, was knocked out in a collision with a Birmingham attacker when he was hit in the neck. For the remaining 15 minutes he defended his net, because at the time there were no substitutions possible. Manchester City held on for the victory, and the hero of the final was Bert Trautmann, due to his spectacular saves in the last minutes of the match. Three days later, an x-ray revealed he had a broken vertebra in his neck.

He appeared in 545 matches for City during a 15 year period between 1949 and 1964. He had no caps for Germany, because the German manager Sepp Herberger did not call up German players who were playing in other countries. This had been particularly frustrating for Trautmann because for much of his career he had been regarded as the world's greatest goalkeeper. He won the FWA Footballer of the Year Award in 1956 for his FA Cup heroics. In 1960, the Football League, for the first time, decided to include non-English players to represent the Football League in representative matches. Trautmann captained a star-studded team against the Irish League and he also played against the Italian League. Trautmann also played in the Manchester City team that lost in the 1955 FA Cup Final to a Jackie Milburn inspired Newcastle United team.

In 1964 he finished his career with a testimonial in front of a crowd of 60,000 people, quite a change from the crowd that initially didn't want a German. Trautmann captained a Manchester XI that included Bobby Charlton and Denis Law, against an England team that included Tom Finney, Stanley Matthews and Jimmy Armfield. After the match, Bobby Charlton called him one of the greatest goalkeepers ever.[citation needed] Russian 'keeper Lev Yashin had this to say: 'There have only been two world-class goalkeepers. One was Lev Yashin, the other was the German boy who played in Manchester — Trautmann.'[citation needed] (Coincidentally, these two great keepers shared the same birthday of October 22). Trautmann is perhaps one of the most well known examples of a German who fought in the war being taken to the hearts of English people.

[edit] Later career

After leaving City Trautmann played briefly for Wellington Town before an unsuccessful spell as general manager of Stockport County in 1965/66. From 1967 to 1969 he was manager of the German team Preußen Münster. After this, the German Football Association sent him as a development worker to countries like Liberia, Nigeria and Yemen. Trautmann remarried and has settled down in Spain (see below) and visits his old club Manchester City several times a year. He is still an idol for all generations of City supporters.

[edit] Private life

He married a Manchester woman in 1950, with whom he had a son, who was born in 1951 and was killed in a car accident a few months after the FA Cup Final in 1956. He was divorced from his wife in the 1960s. Since 1990 he has lived with his second wife in a small bungalow on the Spanish coast near Valencia. He has since helped found the Trautmann Foundation (http://www.trautmann-foundation.org) which aims to use his example to improve British-German relationships through football.

Trautmann is perhaps one of the best examples of a German who fought in World War Two and who quickly became a popular household name in England despite this. Despite the traditional rivalry between the two nations in footballing terms he has bridged the gap in a manner perhaps not matched until Jürgen Klinsmann in the 1990s.

[edit] Honours

[edit] Notes

  • Trautmann never played for the West Germany team, because at that time, it was custom to snub players not playing in Germany, in part because of the difficulties of training. For these reasons, Trautmann missed the 1954 World Cup, which West Germany won, although he was arguably the best German keeper at the time.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

Preceded by
Don Revie		 Football Writers' Association Footballer of the Year
1956		 Succeeded by
Tom Finney
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../b/e/r/Bert_Trautmann_d9b8.html"
In other languages