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, rugby lea ...

who played as a defender. He is best remembered for scoring the last-minute equaliser for

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

at the

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

final Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: *Final examination or finals, a test given at the end of a course of study or training *Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which d ...

Playing career

Weber, a central defender with

1. FC Köln 1. Fußball-Club Köln 01/07 e. V., better known as simply 1. FC Köln () or FC Cologne in English language, English, is a German professional association football, football club based in Cologne in North Rhine-Westphalia. It was formed in 1948 ...

in 356

Bundesliga The Bundesliga (; ), sometimes referred to as the Fußball-Bundesliga () or 1. Bundesliga (), is a professional association football league in Germany and the highest level of the German football league system. The Bundesliga comprises 18 teams ...

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 the London Borou ...

in 1966 to make the score 2–2. Opponents

England England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...

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. Founded on 4 February 1899, Werder are best known for their professional association foo ...

, 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 axial tilt, tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperat ...

. His successor Fritz Langner, who acted in cooperation with Rudi Assauer, could not avoid the drop to the 2. Bundesliga 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, providing year-round training and activities to 5 million participants and Unified Sports partners in 172 countries. Special Ol ...

References

External links

* * * 1944 births Living people People from Sławno Sportspeople from the Province of Pomerania German men's footballers West German men's footballers Men's association football defenders Germany men's international footballers Germany men's 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 Footballers from West Pomeranian Voivodeship West German football managers Footballers from Cologne {{Germany-footy-defender-1940s-stub