Fritz Szepan

Friedrich "Fritz" Szepan (2 September 1907 – 14 December 1974) was a German footballer in the period leading up to and including World War II. He spent his entire career with Schalke 04 where he won six national championships and one German Cup. He is commonly regarded as one of the greatest Schalke players of all time. To celebrate the 100th birthday of the club, the supporters voted the Schalker Jahrhundertelf, the "Team of the century": he was included in the midfield. From 1929 to 1938 he played for the Germany national team which he led as captain in 30 matches and during two World Cups.

Usually a highly skilled midfielder, his versatility allowed him to play centre half and as forward. He was not very fast, however he compensated his lack of speed with fantastic intelligence, technique and positional play. Because of his extraordinary game understanding and leadership, he was later known as "Beckenbauer before the war".

Youth
Szepan was born in 1907 in the industrial town of Gelsenkirchen, in a family that came to Gelsenkirchen from the East Prussian Kreis Neidenburg. His father moved to the industrial centre of the Ruhr area to find work in the mining industry. In the typical working-class milieu of the "Kohlenpott", young Fritz grew up as one of six children in the family. The straw-blonde boy played soccer in the neighborhood street teams. After leaving school without a degree, Szepan completed an apprenticeship as a tinsmith at Küppersbusch and also ensured that his company's apprentice football team was successful. He joined Schalke 04 as a youth player in 1924 and remained with the side until his retirement in 1950. He first played for the senior side at the age of 17 in 1924. At the instigation of his friend Ernst Kuzorra, Szepan joined the first team squad of FC Schalke 04 in 1925 at the age of 18. He and his brother-in-law Ernst Kuzorra led Schalke during the era of the team's greatest success in the 1930s when it was the dominant club in Germany. Together they established the famous "Schalker Kreisel" system that used short flat passes to overwhelm their opponent's defence.

Career at FC Schalke 04
After Kuzorra and Szepan had established themselves in Schalke's first team, it developed into one of the best German club teams. In 1934, Schalke won the German championship for the first time, beating 1. FC Nürnberg 2-1 in the final, in which Szepan equalized in the 88th minute and Kuzorra scored the winning goal. Thanks to the perfectly celebrated "gyro", the art of the centimetre-precise, fast flat pass, free running and dribbling, the team in the royal blue jersey rushed from success to success in the following years.

The fathers of success and central figures in the game system were Kuzorra and Szepan. This compensated for his lack of liveliness and speed with game intelligence, overview, technique and outstanding positional play. As a playmaker, Szepan was the thinker and leader of the team, Kuzorra was an iron-hard full-blooded striker and executor. Because of his extraordinary understanding of the game and his leadership on the pitch, Szepan was subsequently ennobled as a "pre-war cymbal builder". Nominally as a striker on the field, he usually let himself fall and directed the game from deep. Constructive play structure, under the direction of Szepan, was the key to the success of Schalke Kreisel.

In 1935 the championship title was defended with a 6:4 win over VfB Stuttgart. Two years later, the “Knappen” won the first double in German football history with a championship and DFB-Pokal. By 1942, Schalke had been in the championship final four more times, winning in 1939, 1940 and 1942. Schalke 04 dominated German football during this period and laid the foundation for the “Schalke legend”. The 1942 championship was to be the last championship for Schalke 04 in World War II and at the same time the last title for 16 years. After the end of the war, “blonde Fritz” helped rebuild FC Schalke before ending his career in 1949 due to knee problems and back pain. On 12 November 1950, Szepan and his brother-in-law Kuzorra officially bid farewell in a game against Clube Atlético Mineiro in Schalke's Glückauf-Kampfbahn.

Career in the national team
Unlike Kuzorra, Szepan also had a successful international career. From 1929 to 1939 he played for the Germany national team which he led as captain in 30 matches and during two World Cups. In 1938, Szepan was named captain of the "Unified Germany" team shortly after the Anschluss. He started out at inside right but gained international recognition in his interpretation of the centre half role. Szepan made the play of Schalke and the Germany national side at a time when other centre halves were largely committed to covering the opposing centre forward. He however was not an easy-going player and declared his retirement from international play more than once. Szepan had a comeback in late 1936, playing at inside left. His displays again reached the high level of his 1934 World Cup performance and by 1937 Szepan was the outstanding playmaker of the Breslau XI.

After his retirement in 1950, Szepan remained active as coach for Wuppertaler SV, Schalke 04 and Rot-Weiß Essen, leading that club to the German championship in 1955. He served Schalke again as club president from 1964 to 1967. He died on 14 December 1974 in his hometown Gelsenkirchen.

In his 1978 book "Fussball", Helmut Schön characterised Szepan as follows:

"One from the gallery of great playmakers, not markedly pacy, but talented to make the game pacy. He knew how to play directly but also capable of great solos - all that while being strong enough defensively to have played as a stopper. A commander."

Trivia

 * He and fellow Schalke star Ernst Kuzorra married each other's sisters, and thus became brothers-in-law.