

These freedoms cost the still immature team in the first Bundesliga season with a number of sometimes high defeats. This resulted in a carefree and offensive style of playing, the hallmark of Fohlenelf. Weisweiler corresponded to the needs of the association with his attitude to promote the education and development of young talents.He promoted individualism and gave them considerable freedom on the field. The economic situation of the club did not allow to finance a team of stars. However whilst Vogts' individual form was brilliant, Gladbach as a whole found the step up from the regional leagues tough. His rapid rise to prominence helped him catch the eye of the National Team selectors, initially playing nine international boys' games for West Germany and then making three appearances for the under-23s team. It didn't take Vogts long to make an impression at Gladbach, with him being selected in the kicker Bundesliga Team of the Season in his debut campaign of 1965–66. He was taken with the style of Borussia and wrote that they would play like young foals. Reporter Wilhelm August Hurtmanns coined the nickname in his articles in the Rheinische Post. They earned the nickname "foals" due to their low average age as well as their carefree and successful play. It was also how Gladbach acquired a new nickname – the youthfulness of their squad led them to be tagged, Die Fohlen – the foals. They both had young teams and this, to some extent, was the root of their rivalry. This was to prove to be the first trophy of many as Vogts would play an integral role in them becoming one of the biggest clubs in German history and Bayern Munich's original adversaries.īoth Bayern and Gladbach had won promotion to the Bundesliga in 1965, Bayern topping the southern regional league and Gladbach winning in the west. As fate would have it, Gladbach ended up defeating Köln on the way to its first trophy, the 1960 DFB-Pokal. During its first six decades of existence, Gladbach had enjoyed a moderate amount of success in the local competitions and was mostly known for its fierce rivalry with FC Köln. The club was founded as FC Borussia in 1900 the name was borrowed from the Latin spelling of the word Prussia, the region in which the club was situated in. In signing for Borussia Monchengladbach, Vogts had chosen wisely in starting his career at a club whose rise to success had been a long time coming. THE BLOSSOMING OF BORUSSIA MONCHENGLADBACH FC He saw in Vogts, a footballer who would provide the balance to his free-flowing attacking side, admiring Vogts' keen defensive instinct but sensing that the German was also capable of being complementary to Die Fohlen's beautiful game. Most of the credit for the club's meteoric rise to excellence went to Hennes Weisweiler, a coach who brought a breath of fresh air to the club with his brand of attacking football. Indeed, the club earned their promotion only three years later, at the same time as Bayern Munich. While Gladbach was not among the sixteen teams invited for the first Bundesliga season in 1963, the top tier of German football could not evade them for long.
#Bundesliga manager hattrick deutsche professional
He need not have bothered as when Vogts was 18 years old, he was snapped up by the then Bundesliga promoted side Borussia Mönchengladbach, in the summer of 1965, securing his future as a professional footballer. Keen to have a back up career in case he did not make it in football, Vogts undertook an apprenticeship, and worked for half a year as a journeyman because he wanted to become a technical draftsman - making detailed technical drawings or plans for machinery, buildings and electronics. Vogts joined the boys' football team of local sports club VfR Büttgen in 1954 at the age of seven. H ans-Hubert "Berti" Vogts was born on Decemin Bottgen, Germany.
