Wolfgang Weber (born 26 June 1944) is a German former

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugb ...

best remembered for scoring the last-minute equaliser for

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 ...

in the

1966 World Cup The 1966 FIFA World Cup was the eighth FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial football tournament for men's senior national teams. It was played in England from 11 July to 30 July 1966. The England national football team defeated West Germany 4-2 in the ...

final.

Playing career

Weber, a central defender with

1. FC Köln 1. Fußball-Club Köln 01/07 e. V., commonly known as simply FC Köln () or FC Cologne in English, is a German professional football club based in Cologne in North Rhine-Westphalia. It was formed in 1948 as a merger of the clubs ''Kölner Ball ...

in 356

Bundesliga The Bundesliga (; ), sometimes referred to as the Fußball-Bundesliga () or 1. Bundesliga (), is a professional association football league in Germany. At the top of the German football league system, the Bundesliga is Germany's primary footb ...

matches, poked the ball home with almost the last kick of the game at

Wembley Wembley () is a large suburbIn British English, "suburb" often refers to the secondary urban centres of a city. Wembley is not a suburb in the American sense, i.e. a single-family residential area outside of the city itself. in north-west Londo ...

in 1966 to make the score 2–2. Opponents

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe ...

went on to win 4–2 in extra time. Weber played for Köln between 1963 and 1978 and won 53 caps for his country, scoring just one other goal. He also represented West Germany at the 1968 European Championships and the 1970 World Cup. His last appearance for his country was in 1974.

Later life

From summer 1978 until his dismissal in January 1980, Weber coached the Bundesliga side

Werder Bremen Sportverein Werder Bremen von 1899 e. V. (), commonly known as Werder Bremen (), Werder or simply Bremen, is a German professional sports club based in Bremen, Free Hanseatic City of Bremen. Founded on 4 February 1899, they are best known for the ...

but was sacked in the relegation struggle of the North German side in his second

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and ...

. His successor

Fritz Langner Fritz Langner (8 August 1912 – 25 January 1998) was a German footballer and later manager Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a nonprofit organization, or a government body. It is th ...

, who acted in cooperation with

Rudi Assauer Rudolf "Rudi" Assauer (30 April 1944 – 6 February 2019) was a German football player and executive. After his professional career for Borussia Dortmund and Werder Bremen, Assauer served as the general manager of FC Schalke 04 for many years. ...

, could not avoid the drop to the

2. Bundesliga The 2. Bundesliga ( ) is the second division of professional football in Germany. It was implemented 11 years after the founding of the Fußball-Bundesliga as the new second division for professional football. The 2. Bundesliga is ranked below ...

in the later stages of Bremen's 1979–80 campaign. In retirement, Weber has been involved with the German branch of the

Special Olympics Special Olympics is the world's largest sports organization for children and adults with intellectual disabilities and physical disabilities, providing year-round training and activities to 5 million participants and Unified Sports partners in ...

References

External links

* * * 1944 births Living people People from Sławno People from the Province of Pomerania German footballers West German footballers Association football defenders Germany international footballers Germany B international footballers 1. FC Köln players Bundesliga players 1966 FIFA World Cup players 1970 FIFA World Cup players German football managers SV Werder Bremen managers Bundesliga managers Recipients of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany {{Germany-footy-defender-1940s-stub