Full name Klaus Schlappner Name Klaus Schlappner Years Team | Current team N/A Role Football player | |
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Date of birth (1940-05-22) May 22, 1940 (age 75) Place of birth Lampertheim, Hesse, Germany | ||
Playing position | ||
Klaus Schlappner (born May 22, 1940 in Lampertheim, Hesse, Germany) is a football manager. He is predominately remembered for his first spell with SV Waldhof Mannheim, where he led them to the 2. Bundesliga title and several seasons in the Bundesliga as well as being the first foreign coach to manage the Chinese national football team.
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Early career
Klaus Schlappner's early career in football was not particularly eventful he would play for his local football team in Lampertheim in his youth and only progress up to amateur football or lower league regional football. He would instead move into coaching before he retired playing and achieve the necessary coaching certificates in 1976 before carrying on with his studies in Cologne to achieve a certificate in teaching football management.
Managerial career
Klaus Schlappner's career as a manager rose to prominence when he was able to lead SV Waldhof Mannheim to win the 2. Bundesliga in the 1982–83 league season. During his time with them he would help establish them within the Bundesliga for the next several seasons and oversee them through some of their most successful periods in the clubs history until he left in 1987. He would go on to rejoin former club SV Darmstadt 98 in the second tier to help them fight for promotion during the 1987–88 league season where they narrowly missed out on a position to the Bundesliga by losing a play-off position. The following seasons would see other second tier clubs 1. FC Saarbrücken and FC Carl Zeiss Jena call for his services in their push for promotion, however Klaus Schlappner was unable to achieve this with either team.
In 1992, he led the Chinese national football team to the semi-finals of the 1992 AFC Asian Cup, but he was dismissed after the team failed to qualify for the 1994 FIFA World Cup qualification. He would nevertheless stay within China as a technical adviser for the football federation until he returned to Germany to manage SV Waldhof Mannheim again in 1996 to help them for their promotion bid to return to the Bundesliga, however his return was disappointing and he left before the season ended. He would move away from senior management but would return to Asia to help Iran to establish the newly re-branded Iran Pro League during 2000 as well as acting as an adviser for the Mongolian Football Federation in 2006.
Honours
SV Waldhof Mannheim