The Austrian coach Ernst Happel was a real world coach and a pronounced grumbler. His fierce face made history, as did his achievements as a player and coach. Thirty years ago today, the man who said the beautiful phrase: “A day without football is a day wasted” died.
Shortly before his death, Ernst Happel said a very special sentence: “Everything was worth it for me and I don’t regret anything.” Thirty years ago today, on November 14, 1992, one of the best coaches in football history passed away after a long and serious illness. A man who lived by the wonderful motto: “A day without football is a day wasted.” Born in Vienna, he became German champion twice with Hamburger SV and also won the European Cup in 1983
His players appreciated their coach, but when Ernst Happel called them “jokers”, “magicians” or “coconuts”, they knew that he considered them to be the less talented footballers on the team. He loved other players because of their talent but despaired of their state of mind. A journalist was nevertheless very surprised by Happel’s drastic choice of words (“They shit in his brain”) for the exceptional talent Wolfram Wuttke. The Austrian thought for a moment whether it couldn’t be put in a nicer way, but then replied: “Well, I can’t put it any other way, that’s a fact.”
Such sentences and his always somewhat grim-looking face prompted the “Spiegel” to the witty sentence: “After winning the German championship, Happel looked as bitter as Quasimodo before his final jump from Notre-Dame.” Unfortunately, there was something to it, as Happel once confided to a viewer in Augsburg who had asked him why he always looked so grim. Happel didn’t wrinkle his face at the question and answered with narrowed eyes: “With the job, there’s nothing to laugh about.”
Perhaps that’s why Happel rarely felt like communicating with his professionals: “I don’t talk to players, I operate with players.” A quote from Dieter Schatzschneider shows what that meant in concrete terms. The HSV striker was asked by journalists whether he would be used by his coach in the next game. The curly head shrugged: “Only God and the trainer know that. And I’m not talking to either of them at the moment.”
Another quote shows why Happel (“I’m not a friend of the players. I work at a distance”) was inclined to limit conversations with his actors. It reveals the opinion that the coach generally had of his professionals: “My claim: the players have to work 90 minutes, run. And I demand discipline. We need players of a certain format: 80 percent brains, 20 percent technology. Today it is often 20 percent brain without technology.”
Ernst Happel could afford such things. The players respected him (“Anyone who has Happel as a coach has won the lottery”, Franz Beckenbauer), the respect was huge. The HSV professionals not only knew that Happel himself was once a talented international, but also that he could make teams better. His reputation from the coaching years in the Netherlands at ADO Den Haag and Feyenoord Rotterdam was legendary. There he was celebrated as a modern coach who, with some revolutionary game ideas, is also considered the pioneer of the famous “Voetbal total”.
As a Bonds coach, Happel and the Netherlands even reached the final against hosts Argentina at the 1978 World Cup. At his first coaching station in The Hague, he also celebrated a special trick in dealing with the players for the first time. In training, he had a can placed on the crossbar and shot it down from the 16-meter line on the first try. He then asked his players to do the same. Those who made it were allowed to take a shower.
In Hamburg he repeated the number. During the very first training session, Happel grabbed a ball, had a can placed on the goal bar and shot it down with one shot. After that, every HSV professional was allowed to play once. With the exception of Franz Beckenbauer, everyone failed. Happel took another ball, stood at the 16-meter line and shot the can down again. Then he looked around and said: “So, now we’ll do fitness training!”
But his eternal adversary Max Merkel also knew the other side of Ernst Happel: “He liked everything that started with F. Film, women, fire water, Fidelitas of all kinds. But he was also involved in skat, poker and roulette.” The successful Austrian coach (18 title wins) would probably not have contradicted these words himself. And so the bon vivant Happel also saw another topic in a rather relaxed manner: “Order and discipline must be there. But the player must also have regular sex traffic. He can’t go five weeks without sex. He can’t sweat it out of his brain .” Jimmy Hartwig was very grateful to his boss for this attitude: “Coach Ernst Happel also understands that a player breaks out in a sweat after 14 days of training camp when he sees a woman.”
Happel, who once shot his national team keeper Walter Zeman into his own net in a friendly game in 1954 out of irritation, said of himself: “I can tell by looking at my butt if someone brings the last.” His idea of ??the game: “Football is an intelligent sport, it doesn’t matter whether it’s played with instinct, with your head or your heart, you have to master it.”
Happel himself lived football with every fiber of his body: “I have my most sleepless nights every Saturday afternoon on the sidelines.” But football also offered such moments as May 25, 1983. Back then, Hamburger SV played against Juventus Turin in the final of the European Cup. Looking back, Ernst Happel always had fond memories of this special game: “The first half in Athens – I crossed my arms and thought: There’s nothing nicer. It’s no nicer in a church either.”
Ernst Happel once said about himself: “Grab, grumble, I just have to grumble in the morning. If I do that, the whole day is better for me. If I can’t grumble, it’s a bad day for me.” Thirty years ago today was a bad day for football. Ernst Happel died in Tyrol at the age of just 66.
