Who would have thought that one of the least attractive matches of the championship on paper, between two opponents who are not among the world’s top football teams, would attract the attention of soccer fans in Kočevje. During the 36 th minute of the match between the USA and Wales, when young USA forward Timothy Weah dexterously took a pass from a teammate on the edge of the penalty area and beat the Welsh goalkeeper with the outside of his foot to score the Americans a 1–0 lead. You will say nothing special. And you would be right if the son of the Liberian President, who is also considered by far the best football player in Liberian history, George Weah, was not in question. With this, 20-year-old Timothy recalled the golden days of his legendary father, who in 1995 won the most prestigious individual award in the world of soccer, the Ballon d’Or for the best soccer player on the planet.

And why is this soccer player important for Kočevska region, or how is he connected to it in any way? The answer is simple: he is the first (former) soccer player from the Blau-Weiss Gottschee Soccer Club from New York to score in the biggest football championship in the world! Timothy was a member of the New York club’s youth team from 2010 to 2013, where he learned his first soccer skills. Although he has only played for the club in the youth divisions and has never played for them at the professional level, it is a great recognition of the successful work of this USA team with Gottscheer tradition.

Gottscheer Soccer Club in New York

The Blau-Weiss Gottschee Soccer Club was founded in 1951 by a group of immigrant Gottscheers in New York. The founders set it up to “revive the spirit of their homeland”. The club was already successful in its early years in competitions of German clubs in the USA, and soon won the right to compete in US national championships. From the very beginning, they have focused on the systematic development of young players who have gone on to enviable careers at major clubs.

In the first decades, the club was dominated by players of Gottscheer descent or had at least distant Gottscheer roots. This practice has since changed, and today the majority of the team is made up of USA soccer players. Blau-Weiss Gottschee currently has 26 active teams in different age categories, 20 in men’s and six in women’s competition. As a branch, the club is closely linked to one of USA’s most famous soccer clubs, the New York Red Bulls of the elite American MLS league, where it serves as a talent incubator.

As mentioned above, Timothy Weah is the greatest jewel of the youth school of the Gottscheer club, but among its most outstanding “products” are some players who have made a strong mark in the US and internationally. In particular, Mike Windischmann, who even captained the US team at the 1990 World Cup in Italy, Matteo Ritaccio, who currently plays for the youth team of the English giant Liverpool, and Joey Fink, who was a teammate of the famous Pelé in the mid-1970s.

Joey Fink – a Gotscheer Who Played alongside Pelé

The greatest soccer player of all time, the legendary Pelé, has recently left us. Given that the famous Brazilian virtuoso played for only two clubs in his entire soccer career (his home club Santos and the New York Cosmos), there are few former soccer players still alive who can boast of having been his teammates. One of the lucky ones is Joseph “Joey” Fink, an American of Gottscheer descent, who shared a locker room with the King, as the Brazilian was nicknamed, at the New York club for a few months.

Born in New York in 1951, the 71-year-old Fink’s surname suggests that his ancestral roots are in Kočevska region. Fink’s parents moved to the USA from Smuka in Kočevska region in 1950, so that Joey was born just a year later in one of the world’s biggest cities. At the age of eight, as a descendant of the Gottscheer people, he started practising soccer with the Gottscheer club Blau-Weiss Gottschee, where he stayed until the age of 20. He then enrolled to New York University, where he continued to play soccer until, in 1973, he was offered his first professional contract by the New York Cosmos, worth $2,100 per season.

Fink played for the Cosmos as a forward from 1973 to 1975, and in his final season was joined by Pelé, the world’s most famous soccer player at the time. Joey scored 20 goals in the strongest American league, which also earned him six appearances for the US national team. He played 12 games with Pelé. After the New York club brought in Giorgio Chinaglia, a well- known Italian forward, Fink was traded to the Tampa Bay Rowdies. Nevertheless, the honour of playing with the world’s first true superstar is something that even much more famous soccer players than him can envy the American Gottscheer.

This is how Joey Fink remembers the great Pelé: “He was sociable, relaxed and charismatic. He knew how to make us all feel comfortable in his company. He was always smiling, a real people’s man with the quality of a world star. Even though he was already in his mature soccer years when he came to us, at 35 he was still an outstanding soccer player with flashes of brilliance.”

Gottscheers Kicked around in Cleveland as well

Around the same time as in New York, descendants of Gottscheers founded their own soccer club in Cleveland. The Gottscheer Soccer Club was founded in 1953 and Arnold Mausser became its first president. At first, it had only four Gottscheer descendants playing there, but over the decades it has welcomed players from different ethnic backgrounds into its ranks.

The club was conceptualised on the model of the Austrian giant (Austria Soccer Club) from Vienna, and that is why its players initially wore purple jerseys, inspired by the famous team. The Gottscheer team from Cleveland had a good record in the early years of its existence, winning the 1956 Ohio State championship. Many other successes and prizes followed, which also secured the club the right to compete at the US national level.

In the meantime, the club changed its name to German-American Sport Club for sponsorship reasons. In 1985, they moved to Novelty, Ohio, where they have been coaching and playing home games ever since. It currently has a men’s and women’s team, a men’s reserve team and a veterans’ team.

Sources:

• Blau-Weiss Gotschee Soccer Club Facebook page, accessible viahttps://www.facebook.com/BlauWeissGottschee/
• Blau-Weiss Gotschee Soccer Club website, accessible via https://bwgottschee.org/
• New York Red Bulls Soccer Club website, accessible viahttps://www.newyorkredbulls.com/
• Wikipedia site, accessible via https://www.wikipedia.org/
• Sieder, Joseph at al. 1989. 1889-1989 E.O.U.V.
• Online conversation with Joey Fink.

Read more about soccer in Gottschee before the Second World War here.

The post A “Gottscheer” Star among the Heroes of the World Cup appeared first on Gottscheer blog.

Soccer was played recreationally in Kočevska region as early as the end of the 19 th century. The pioneers in the area were German Turners, followed by Kočevje grammar school students. Nevertheless, the beginning of organised soccer in Kočevska region is considered to be the period after the end of the World War I. In 1920, the Kulturno-prosvetno društvo Svoboda Kočevje (Svoboda Kočevje Cultural and Enlightenment Society), which was mainly made up of mine and other workers from Kočevje, became active. Under the umbrella of this society, sportspersons from three sports disciplines – athletes, track and field athletes and soccer players – participated. Today’s Kočevje Soccer Club therefore considers the year of its foundation (despite many subsequent name changes) to be the name mentioned above.

Strong German Influence

The design of the Svoboda coat of arms testifies to the fact that the first soccer club in Kočevje had a strong German influence. It was a circle divided into quarters with four mirrored letters F. These symbolised the German adjectives frisch, fromm, fröhlich and frei (fresh, pious, joyful and free). The first “real” organised soccer match took place in Kočevje on 6 August 1922, when the local Svoboda team hosted the team of the same name (Svoboda) from Most pri Ljubljani.

During this period, soccer was also actively played in the neighbouring villages of Kočevje. The most famous and successful club at that time was the German Sportklub Rapid Mitterdorf from Stara Cerkev. The village had a full soccer team and defeated Svoboda 8:1 in their first match against each other. Alfred Erker, a healthcare worker who had studied in Graz, brought football knowledge to Stara Cerkev, while local merchant Greisch bought the team black and white striped jerseys, modelled on those of the Austrian football giant Rapid from Vienna.

Slovenian-German Derby in Kočevje

In 1926, the Kočevje soccer club was renamed from Svoboda to Sportski klub Jadran. It hosted its matches on the pitch where Gaj Stadium stands today. Kočevje grammar school students played for it mainly, but was also joined by soccer players from Stara Cerkev, who handed it the aforementioned black and white jerseys. Practically at the same time, another Kočevje club of the time, Sportklub Herold, was formed, mainly by German trade apprentices. It was chaired by the glassmaker Walter Engele and played its home matches on the same pitch as the Jadran club. The third football club in Kočevje in the post-war period was the Sportski klub Dijaški dom, which, as its name suggests, was made up of students from the local boarding school.

In 1935, a new soccer club of Gottscheers, Sportklub Rapid Gottschee, was founded in Kočevje. It was part of the so-called Kulturbund (Swabian-German Cultural Association). This was the beginning of the national conflicts and tensions between Slovenes and Germans in Kočevska region, which were also reflected in soccer. In June of the same year, the Slovenian soccer players from Kočevje united for the first time in one single, unified club, which was called Sportski klub Kočevje.

It was the first independent soccer association in Kočevje, which was not just a subsection of a sports association offering with a wide range of disciplines. The most interesting, intense and well attended were the matches between the two city rivals , which were watched live by up to 2,000 spectators. Despite the fact that the pre-war atmosphere in Kočevje was highly- charged, according to testimonies from that time, no major riot, neither by fan groups nor political, took place at any of the matches.

During the World War II, practically all sporting activities in Kočevje ceased. Most of the football players of SK Kočevje joined the national liberation struggle partisan resistsance (NOB), many of them were also internees in German concentration camps. After the war, the majority of the German population was expelled from Kočevska region, which meant the end of German football in the area. This, of course, also marked the end of the matches between the Slovenian and German teams from Kočevje.

Sources:

• Gorše, Jože. 2020. Kočevski nogomet: Že stoletje. Kočevje: Pokrajinski muzej.
• Kordiš, Ivan, Jerbič Perko, Vesna in Pavlin, Tomaž. 2019. Telovadba in šport na Kočevskem. Kočevje: Pokrajinski muzej.
• FC Kočevje website, available at http://www.nkkocevje.si/.

Have you ever heard of the Pollichmandle – the guardian of dormiece? You can find more information about this typical Gottscheer narrative hero here.

The post Soccer in Kočevska Region from the Beginnings to the World War II appeared first on Gottscheer blog.