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.
Bernd Schneider, born in Jena on 17 November 1973, spent his early years in the German Democratic Republic. He took his first steps in football at the two Jena clubs BSG Aufbau and FC Carl Zeiss, the biggest club in his hometown. He played in the second division for six years in the 90s. Bernd Schneider stood out as an accomplished dribbler with his experience from street football always evident. His nickname Schnix comes from the Thuringian dialect: ‘Schnixeln’ is a synonym for dribbling, being able to control the ball. After Jena were relegated in 1998, Schnix went in the opposite direction. Newly promoted Eintracht Frankfurt brought into the Bundesliga. He spent a year there.
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18 June 1950 saw a friendly match for FC Köln, formed from the merger of two clubs in February 1948, against the Werkself at the Stadion Am Stadtpark. The two teams had already faced each other in May 1949 as winners of the Rhine district leagues in the final for promotion to the Oberliga West. The new club from Cologne came out on top in the two games and were promoted.
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In a messed-up season in 1984/85 everybody is happy that the battle against relegation is over before the final matchday. The visitors are UEFA Cup contenders SV Waldhof Mannheim in front of a sparse 6,000 spectators at the Ulrich Haberland Stadium. The Waldhof lads under their coach Klaus Schlappner are the surprise packet of the season. In their second campaign in the Bundesliga, the team from Mannheim are fifth on 35 points (with two points for a win back then) ahead of the game in Leverkusen and in a UEFA Cup qualifying spot. Two points behind them are Bayer 05 Uerdingen and Hamburg SV.
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Tranquillo Barnetta was born in St. Gallen in Switzerland on 22 May 1985. Quillo, as he was called in the football world, has Italian roots. His great-grandfather emigrated from Italy to the east of Switzerland. Quillo was interested in football early on and he played for the St. Gallen club FC Rotmonten from the age of six. He joined his favourite club FC St. Gallen at the age of 11. There he became a youth international. He won the European Championships with his teammates in the Switzerland U17 team in 2002. The youngsters from Switzerland beat France 4-2 on penalties in the final to become U17 European champions.
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Since the establishment of the Bundesliga on 28 July 1962 for the 1963/64 season, there have been five Regional Leagues: North, Berlin, West, South-west and South. The champions of those five leagues qualified directly for promotion play-offs that were played in two groups of four teams. That included the two second-placed teams in the West and South-west Regional Leagues. The two runners-up from the North and the South played a qualifier for the eighth place in the promotion games.
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