As a teenager he played for SpVg Brakel and he broke through to the first XI at his hometown club. In a game against the Schalke 04 second team he was spotted by their then general manager Rudi Assauer and he brought him to Gelsenkirchen in 1987. Together with his older brother Michael, who joined Schalke from FC Köln, he was unable to prevent the team getting relegated. Claus-Dieter was approached by Bayer 04 in 1988 and he signed for Leverkusen.
Under coach Rinus Michels, ‘Pelle’, as he was ironically known in our team, as he could not really be compared to the football ability of the Brazilian star, did not get a good deal. He only made nine appearances, seven in the Bundesliga and one each in the DFB Pokal and the UEFA Cup. The attacking midfielder with a very good left foot could not find a berth in the Dutch system of the former Netherlands coach. After that disappointing season he moved on to Bundesliga 2.
Initially at VfL Osnabrück, then Hertha Berlin and VfL Wolfsburg. He just missed out on promotion with the Wolves but reached the DFB Pokal final. VfL lost 3-0 to Borussia Mönchengladbach in Berlin. Wollitz had great success a year later with a move to FC Kaiserslautern. He was relegated from the Bundesliga with the team from the Pfalz but he came on in the Pokal final in Berlin on 87 minutes and a 1-0 win against Karlsruher SC made him a DFB Pokal winner. Then he returned to Bundesliga 2 to play for KFC Uerdingen.
After two years with the side from Krefeld he moved on to FC Köln. Wollitz played there for three seasons in the Bundesliga and Bundesliga 2. He made 48 appearances for the Goats. His next and final club was the Oberliga team TuS Lingen. Claus-Dieter Wollitz hung up his boots after one season in 2002.
From that point he dedicated himself to his second career – as a coach. His first job in 2003 was taking over the reins at KFC Uerdingen. After a year in Krefeld he went to VfL Osnabrück – another club where he had played. He achieved promotion to Bundesliga 2 with the Lower Saxony club in 2007. During the season he completed his coaching course and he kept Osnabrück up until 2009. After relegation in 2009 Wollitz took charge of Energie Cottbus after they went down from the Bundesliga.
However, together with his assistant coach Markus Feldhoff, also a former Bayer 04 player, he was unable to take them up straight away. In 2011/12 Wollitz asked to be released by club for personal, sporting and family reasons.
He returned to VfL Osnabrück as head coach on 1 January 2012. After two very successful years in Lower Saxony and eighteen months at Viktoria Köln he went back to Cottbus for a second spell.
After nearly four years with promotion and relegation between the Regional League and the third division ways parted for Energie Cottbus and Pele Wollitz on 1 January 2020 – the club were top of the Regional League North East at the time. But the coach would not be away for long.
He coached FC Magdeburg for 18 months but Wollitz has been back in the Energie dugout since 18 May 2021.
With his genuine and emotional leadership style, that can lead to angry outbursts from time to time, Pele finally took Energie Cottbus back to the third division in 2024 as champions of the Regional League North East after five years in the fourth tier. Cottbus not only stayed up comfortably but were close to a remarkable finish: On the final matchday, they lose third spot due to defeat at home and the chance to go up to Bundesliga 2.
Claus-Dieter Wollitz, father of three daughters, lives in Brandenburg and is 60 this month.
Dear Pele, I wish you many happy returns on your birthday. Stay as you are!
Minas Hantzidis was born on 4 July 1966 in Kettwig, near Essen, and he grew up in Germany. He developed a passion for football at a young age and, whilst still a youth player, moved from Wuppertaler SV to Bayer 04. The attacking and goal-scoring midfielder then made a name for himself in his first senior season at Bayer 04. In the reserve team, he scored goal after goal in the first half of the season, soon began training with the first team and was brought on as a substitute for the first time by manager Erich Ribbeck on 22 November 1985 in a home match against Bayern Munich.
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Sascha was born on 3 July 1986 in Leverkusen. He is the son of former Bundesliga 2 player Manfred Dum, who mainly scored goals for Union Solingen but also played for FC Saarbrücken, SC Freiburg and Wuppertaler SV. Sascha started playing for the youth teams at HSV Langenfeld at an early age. There, he caught the eye of scouts from Bayer 04 and joined the club at a young age. Following a growth spurt in the U15 team, which forced him to take a nine-month break, the left-footed player finally had the ideal conditions to establish himself in the Bayer 04 youth ranks. Even as an U17 player, he made the leap into the U19 team. Blessed with immense pace, Sascha primarily played in attacking midfield. Not the most technically gifted, but possessing a powerful shot, he found himself training with the first team in the summer of 2005 alongside Gonzalo Castro, while he was still a U19 player.
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The Werkself could not have hoped for a better start to the Bundesliga 2 North season in 1976/77. At the end of a week-long training camp in Quickborn, Schleswig-Holstein, coach Willibert Kremer’s side secured two convincing victories over BSC Brunsbüttel (5–0) and TuS Holstein Quickborn (6–0). Following this flying start, Bayer 04 faced a considerably tougher challenge on 23 July 1976 at 19:30 CEST at the Ulrich Haberland Stadium against Bundesliga side Karlsruher SC.
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On 27 June 2001, new head coach Klaus Toppmöller and his assistant Peter Hermann led the Werkself out of the changing rooms for their first training session. Joining them as they stepped onto the pitch at training ground 1 were the four new signings: Hans Jörg Butt, Yildiray Bastürk (with special permission from VfL Bochum, as Bayer 04 and VfL had not yet agreed on a transfer fee), Zoltan Sebescen and Michael Zepek, the record holder for appearances for the youth national team.
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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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