Rudolf Wetzer
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Rudolf 'Rudy' Wetzer (born March 17, 1901 in Timişoara - d. April 13, 1993) was the captain and team-coach alongside Octav Luchide, under the management of Costel Rădulescu of the first Romanian side to participate in a FIFA World Cup.
Wetzer owed his position as team captain to a decision by Costel Rădulescu in the weeks prior to the tournament. In May, 1930 the Romanians had lost the King Alexandru's Cup (a two team event) to Yugoslavia in Belgrade. At the time Emeric Vogl was team captain. Wetzer was brought back into the side two weeks' later for a friendly against Greece in Bucharest. This decision reaped considerable rewards for both Rădulescu and Wetzer because Wetzer scored 5 goals in an 8-1 victory for his team. In total Wetzer was to play 17 times for Romania scoring 12 goals [1].
Romania had been grouped with Uruguay and Peru in the tournament, defeating the Peruvians 3-1 before losing to the eventual winners and hosts 4-0. The second of these games was held at the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo.
In club football Wezter played for Juventus Bucureşti (who were Romanian national champions in 1929-1930 season) [2], as such he was a colleague of squad members Vogl and Ladislau Raffinsky. In the 1920s he had played for Unirea Timişoara (appearing, whilst with them, at the 1924 Olympic Games) and Chinezul before moving on. His last matches for Romania (played while he was playing for Ripensia were in 1932; his last match came in a 2-0 defeat to Bulgaria in Belgrade [3]. Otherwise he played for Beogradski SK, Újpest FC, Hyeres, ILSA Timişoara and Craiovan Craiova. While playing in Hungary, he used the name Rudolf Veder.
After retiring as a footballer Wetzer became a trainer. In 1958, during a purge by the ruling national party against "revisionism and bourgeois ideology, indiscipline and descriptive anarchic elements" Wetzer became subject to an order forbidding him from "leaving the collective in which he was engaged without good reason, under penalty of being expelled from the trainers' corps [4].
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