At the age of 16 he then joined the Kickers, trained with the first team as a youth player and he also worked in the offices at the Offenbach club as part of his apprenticeship. In November 1977, at the age of 17, he made his first-team debut. But he had to wait a while for his first goal. On matchday three in the 1978/79 season in the Bundesliga 2 South he opened the scoring for Offenbach on 20 minutes in their 3-2 defeat against Wormatia Worms.
After two and a half years at Kickers Offenbach, Rudi signed for 1860 Munich in the Bundesliga for the 1980/81 season. But his nine goals were unable to prevent the Lions from Munich being relegated. The following season Rudi really took off in Bundesliga 2. He was the top scorer with 37 goals. 1860 were unable to get promoted even with the goals from Völler. But he then made the next step in his career: Werder Bremen signed the pacy striker for the 1982/83 season.
In the next five years, Rudi scored 97 goals in 137 Bundesliga games for the North German side and in 1982 he made his first of 90 international appearances for Germany, was a runner-up at the 1986 World Cup and in 1987 he moved to Italy to play for AS Roma.
In 1990 he celebrated his biggest success in the Italian capital with Germany in winning the World Cup. A year later he secured his first club title – he won the Italian domestic cup competition with AS Roma in 1991. The same year saw them reach the UEFA Cup final where they lost to Inter Milan (0-2, 1-0).
After five successful years where Rudi Völler became a crowd favourite for the Rome side he moved on to France to play for Olympique Marseille. With the French club, he was the first German player to win the first UEFA Champions League, previously the European Cup, with a 1-0 victory against AC Milan.
The Bayer 04 boss Reiner Calmund succeeded in bringing Rudi to Leverkusen in 1994. In two years at Bayer 04 he played 62 Bundesliga games and scored 26 goals and he ended his great playing career on 21 May 1996 with a testimonial in front of a full house at the Ulrich Haberland Stadium.
Reiner Calmund took him under his wings from 1996: Rudi was the Bayer 04 sporting director for the next four years. In the autumn of 2000 he was the caretaker coach for Germany. Originally he was to be in charge until the contract of the then Bayer 04 coach Christoph Daum ran out in the summer of 2001. But that all changed with the affair involving the Werkself coach.
Rudi was the Germany coach for the next four years and in 2002 he led the team to finish runners-up at the World Cup in Japan and South Korea. Two years later he resigned after a disappointing Euros in Portugal where Germany went out at the group stage. After a brief period as a coach at AS Roma he signed a contract as sporting director at Bayer 04 in the summer of 2004 and he stayed with the club to the summer of 2022. During his long time under the Bayer Cross, Rudi Völler was the face of Bayer 04. On the last matchday in the 2021/22 season he received a farewell from the Bayer 04 fans with a big choreography.
Today Rudi is director of the Germany team.
Hans Sarpei was born on 28 June 1976 in Tema, Ghana, and came to Germany with his parents at the age of three, where he grew up in Cologne. Even before he was born, his mother and father worked in Hamburg in the import-export sector. There they met an older man who introduced them to German culture and supported them. Out of gratitude, Hans was later given his first name, although this man died before he was born. Hans comes from a sporting family; his older brother Edward and his nephews Hans Nunoo Sarpei and Kingsley Sarpei were or are also professional footballers.
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On 3 June 1953, Hans-Josef (‘Sepp’) Kretschmann became the fifth coach in the history of Bayer 04 Leverkusen. Born in Allenstein, East Prussia, on 21 March 1902, the football coach first studied to become a teacher before later switching to football. He took over the Werkself from Franz Strehle, under whom the team twice managed to stay in the 1st Oberliga West. However, Strehle did not extend his contract in Leverkusen after these two very successful years.
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After promotion to Bundesliga North 2 in the summer of 1975, Bayer 04 are fighting relegation just eight months later. The club expects full commitment from everyone in this precarious situation. Promotion coach Manfred Rummel is to give up his main job as a teacher at the Mülheim special school and become a full-time coach at Bayer 04. The coach, who is very popular with the team, does not see himself in a position to fulfil the club's request. Despite a 2-0 home win against SpVgg Erkenschwick, Manfred Rummel is put on gardening leave by "mutual agreement".
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Bayer 04, already been promoted to the 1st Oberliga West, played friendly after friendly in the second half of May 1951. And that continued throughout the following month.
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Jacek Krzynowek was born on 15 May 1976 in Kamiensk, Poland, and grew up as a typical country boy. He spent his childhood less in structured training sessions and more on simple pitches, where he spent hours playing football with older boys. He realised early on that he had exceptional shooting power and enormous stamina. But for a long time, he didn't appreciate just how much talent he had. While others dream of a great career, professional football initially seems like a distant world to him that he only knows from television.
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