“Long soup, and God helps out”: Coach wisdom like this has long been a thing of the past – football has changed a lot over the years. In our series “When I was still a player”, today’s coaches remember their active days. This time Jozo “Jelle” Brinkwerth has a say. The 55-year-old was on the sidelines for Sparta Göttingen, 05 or FC Grone and is now assistant coach at SSV Nörten-Hardenberg.
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Actually, he should have ended up in Offenbach, Kaiserslautern or Bielefeld, on the Bieberer Berg, the Betzenberg or the Alm. Because Brinkwerth comes from the village Deblo Brdo in Bosnia-Herzegovina, in German: “Big Mountain”. His first memories of football, however, already play in Göttingen, where his family soon moved.
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Sparta with Jelle Brinkwerth as captain. Heiko Bause standing in the middle, Dimi Avdoulidis kneeling at the bottom left.
© R/Brinkwerth
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“We played in the school yard or on adventure playgrounds, sometimes against older people. We chose two trees and that was the goal, ”recalls Brinkwerth. “If you were bad, you played in goal, if you were better, you got into the storm, and if you were good, you played everywhere.” Little Jozo sometimes went into the box voluntarily. The reason for this was his idol: “I became a Bayern fan because of Sepp Maier,” he says.
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At the age of eleven, he joined the club in 1976 and, as is so often the case, in his case it was a buddy whom he accompanied to training. The buddy lived in Rosenwinkel, the club was called Sparta Göttingen. Its legendary youth leader Hansi Lechte ordered without further ado: “We’ll see you at training on Tuesday!” Sparta was to remain Brinkwerth’s only club as a player – later his wife played handball with the Spartans, and the club became a second family for both of them.
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Jelle Brinkwerth kneeling second from the right, Heiko Bause is fourth from the left.
© R/Brinkwerth
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But every beginning is difficult, and Brinkwerth also had a sobering start: Actually still D-Junior, he had to help out in the first game against an overpowering opponent in the C-Juniors. “I had two ball contacts in 60 minutes. I passed the first ball on, the second was a bad pass. But I still sold 50 percent of my passports. ”Sparta’s trips to Denmark, Sweden, France and Greece were great, and of course Sparta was visited:“ That was real team building. ”
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The first football boots had studs – if they are worn out at some point, they can be replaced and you don’t have to buy new pots, thought the frugal boy. Wrong thought: “We only had the hard court, where the artificial turf is now, and walking with cleats on a hard court is not possible,” he quickly stated.
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Sparta with Jelle Brinkwerth fourth from the left.
© R/Brinkwerth
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With the so-called “Ausgehanzug”, a kind of better tracksuit and common at the time, it was his mother who wanted to save: it should be red with white stripes, at the Pingel sports shop they found what they were looking for. However, the suit only had two stripes, not three. “The first time I wore it, the last time,” reports Brinkwerth.
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There was no pocket money, his only income was sneaky: “I got 50 pfennigs twice a week for the bus to train in winter and secretly rode my bike. When the bus price rose to 70 pfennigs, it was like a wage increase for me. ”The disadvantage: His hands were sometimes so cold that he could no longer open the lock.
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Football – that was what counted for Brinkwerth back then. “We climbed over the fence when there was 60 centimeters of snow and kicked in the locked area,” he reports, adding: “The weather never bothered me much. Maybe you have become a little more comfortable today. ”It was a time when people simply played straight away, and that had consequences:“ I have the feeling that there used to be a lot more instinctive footballers like Thomas Müller. ”
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