Ottmar Hitzfeld

Who is Ottmar Hitzfeld?

Ottmar Hitzfeld is a German former football player and manager, nicknamed der General, and "Gottmar Hitzfeld". With a total of 18 major titles, mostly accumulated in his tenures with Grasshopper Club Zürich, Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich. A trained mathematician and sports teacher Hitzfeld is one of the most successful coaches of German and international football. He has been elected "World Coach of the Year" twice. He is one of only four managers to win the European Cup/UEFA Champions League with two different clubs, along with Ernst Happel, José Mourinho and Jupp Heynckes. He is currently the head coach of the Swiss national football team. Hitzfeld started playing football in the late 1960s with TuS Stetten and FV Lörrach in the lower German leagues before he captured the attention of Swiss first division team FC Basel. He joined the club, located on the other bank of the Rhine, in 1971. With this club the forward won the Swiss championship in 1972 and 1973, in the latter season even contributing as the top striker in Switzerland. In 1975 also he won the cup with Basel.

In 1973, while playing at Basel, he graduated from nearby Lörrach college as a teacher of mathematics and sports. He retained his amateur status in order to be able to participate in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. There he played amongst others with Uli Hoeneß, the later Bayern Munich player and general manager who would hire him as coach in the late 1990s. One of the highlights of this tournament was the first encounter between the national sides of West and East Germany on the football pitch. West Germany lost this match 2–3 and thus failed to reach the semi-finals. In this match Hitzfeld scored one of his five goals in the tournament. In 1975, the 26-year old Hitzfeld accepted an offer by the then German second division side VfB Stuttgart. At the Swabian side, he was part of a legendary "100 goal offense" and in one match against SSV Jahn Regensburg he scored six goals, still the record for a 2. Bundesliga player. After two years, in 1977, the team achieved promotion to the first division, the Bundesliga. Hitzfeld had by that time scored 33 goals in 55 league matches. In the Bundesliga, the club finished the season a remarkable fourth. Hitzfeld contributed five goals in 22 matches. After three years with Stuttgart, Hitzfeld returned to what by then had become his second home, Switzerland. There he played from 1978 to 1980 with FC Lugano before joining FC Luzern, where he finished his playing career in 1983, aged 34.