Gerhard Hans Poschner (born 23 September 1969) is a German former professional

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, rugby ...

who played as a defensive midfielder. He appeared in 286 games in the

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 footbal ...

over 12 seasons, scoring 22 goals for

VfB Stuttgart Verein für Bewegungsspiele Stuttgart 1893 e. V., commonly known as VfB Stuttgart (), is a German sports club based in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg. The club's football team is currently part of Germany's first division, the Bundesliga. Vf ...

and

Borussia Dortmund Ballspielverein Borussia 09 e. V. Dortmund, commonly known as Borussia Dortmund (), BVB (), or simply Dortmund (), is a German professional sports club based in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia. It is best known for its men's professional foot ...

. He also played in Italy, Spain and Austria.

Club career

Poschner was born in

Dumitra Dumitra (german: Mettersdorf; hu, Nagydemeter) is a commune in Bistrița-Năsăud County, Transylvania, Romania. It is composed of three villages: Cepari, Dumitra and Tărpiu. Natives * Gerhard Poschner References Communes in Bistrița ...

, Romania. At the age of five, his family fled the country to escape the

communist regime A communist state, also known as a Marxist–Leninist state, is a one-party state that is administered and governed by a communist party guided by Marxism–Leninism. Marxism–Leninism was the state ideology of the Soviet Union, the Com ...

and moved abroad to Bietigheim-Bissingen, West Germany. He began his professional career in 1987–88 with

, where he played three seasons with little impact in the first team (an average of 15

appearances). Poschner emerged as a top-flight player with

, scoring 14 league goals from 1990 to

1994 File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which sank in the Baltic Sea; Nelson Ma ...

and losing, for the second time, the

UEFA Cup A cup is an open-top used to hold hot or cold liquids for pouring or drinking; while mainly used for drinking, it also can be used to store solids for pouring (e.g., sugar, flour, grains, salt). Cups may be made of glass, metal, china, cla ...

. He returned to Stuttgart for four and a half additional campaigns, helping the side win the 1997 edition of the

DFB-Pokal The DFB-Pokal ( is a German knockout football cup competition held annually by the German Football Association (DFB). Sixty-four teams participate in the competition, including all clubs from the Bundesliga and the 2. Bundesliga. It is considere ...

and moving to

S.S.C. Venezia Venezia Football Club, commonly referred to as Venezia, is a professional football club based in Venice, Italy, that currently plays in Serie B. Originally founded as Venezia Foot Ball Club in 1907, the club have spent a large part of their his ...

from Italy in January 1999; additionally, whilst with the former club, in the 1998 UEFA Cup Winners' Cup Final against Chelsea, he was sent off for dissent late on to put both teams down to ten men, with Dan Petrescu having been ejected beforehand in a 0–1 loss in Stockholm. Subsequently, Poschner played with Rayo Vallecano,

SK Rapid Wien Sportklub Rapid Wien (), commonly known as Rapid Vienna, is an Austrian football club playing in the country's capital city of Vienna. Rapid has won the most Austrian championship titles (32), including the first title in the season 1911–12, ...

, Polideportivo Ejido and

TSV 1860 München A tab-separated values (TSV) file is a simple text format for storing data in a tabular structure, e.g., a database table or spreadsheet data, and a way of exchanging information between databases. Each record in the table is one line of the text ...

, before retiring at the age of almost 35. In 1999–2000 he helped

Madrid Madrid ( , ) is the capital and most populous city of Spain. The city has almost 3.4 million inhabitants and a metropolitan area population of approximately 6.7 million. It is the second-largest city in the European Union (EU), an ...

's Rayo to a best-ever classification in

La Liga The Campeonato Nacional de Liga de Primera División, commonly known simply as Primera División in Spain, and as La Liga in English-speaking countries and officially as LaLiga Santander for sponsorship reasons, stylized as LaLiga, is the men' ...

(ninth), and they were eventually awarded a place in European competition via the

Fair Play award Fair Play Award may refer to: Association football *Kategoria Superiore Fair Play Award, in Albania *FIFA Fair Play Award *MLS Fair Play Award *North American Soccer League Fair Play Award Other *Indian Premier League Fair Play Award * Giro d'Ital ...

, eventually reaching the quarter-finals with the midfielder being an important element. Poschner was named

Real Zaragoza Real Zaragoza, S.A.D. (), commonly referred to as Zaragoza, is a football club based in Zaragoza, Aragon, Spain, that currently competes in the Segunda División, the second tier of the Spanish league system. Zaragoza holds its home games at La ...

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all ...

in August 2009. He left the post at the end of the season, and went to work in the same capacity with 1860 Munich.

Honours

VfB Stuttgart *

: 1996–97 *

runner-up: 1988–89 *

UEFA Cup Winners' Cup The UEFA Cup Winners' Cup was a European football club competition contested annually by the winners of domestic cup competitions. The cup was, chronologically, the second seasonal inter-European club competition organised by UEFA. The tourn ...

runner-up: 1997–98 * DFB-Ligapokal runner-up: 1997 Borussia Dortmund *

runner-up:

1992–93 Year 199 ( CXCIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was sometimes known as year 952 ''Ab urbe condita''. The denomination 199 for this year has been used since th ...

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Poschner, Gerhard 1969 births Living people People from Bistrița-Năsăud County German people of German-Romanian descent German footballers Association football midfielders Bundesliga players VfB Stuttgart players Borussia Dortmund players TSV 1860 Munich players Serie A players Venezia F.C. players La Liga players Segunda División players Rayo Vallecano players Polideportivo Ejido footballers Austrian Football Bundesliga players SK Rapid Wien players Germany under-21 international footballers German expatriate footballers Expatriate footballers in Italy Expatriate footballers in Spain Expatriate footballers in Austria German expatriate sportspeople in Italy German expatriate sportspeople in Spain German expatriate sportspeople in Austria West German footballers