Ottmar Hitzfeld

German football legend with 25 major titles, including Champions League wins with Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich.

Ottmar Hitzfeld (born 12 January 1949) is a German former professional football player and a former manager. He accumulated a total of 25 major titles, mostly in his tenures with Grasshoppers, Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich.

Quick Facts

Born: 12 January 1949
Birthplace: Lörrach, Germany
Position: Forward
Total caps: 300
Total goals: 169

Lore & Background

A striker in his playing days, Hitzfeld won two Swiss Super League titles (1971–72, 1972–73) with Basel. He was top goalscorer in the league for the 1972–73 season. He earned six caps for the West Germany national team, all at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. A trained mathematician and sports teacher, Hitzfeld is one of the most successful coaches of German and international football.

As manager, he won two Bundesliga titles with Dortmund and five Bundesliga titles with Bayern Munich. He won the 1996–97 Champions League with Dortmund, beating a star-studded Juventus team in the final. He won the 2000–01 Champions League with Bayern, defeating Valencia in the final. He has been elected 'World Coach of the Year' twice; he is one of only seven managers to win the European Cup/UEFA Champions League with two clubs, along with Ernst Happel, Luis Enrique, Pep Guardiola, José Mourinho, Jupp Heynckes, and Carlo Ancelotti.

Reader's Guide

Born in Lörrach, Hitzfeld started playing football in the late 1960s with TuS Stetten and FV Lörrach in the lower German leagues, before he captured the attention of Swiss first division team Basel. He joined the club, located on the other bank of the Rhine, in 1971. With this club the forward won the Swiss championship in 1972 and 1973, in the latter season even contributing as the top striker in Switzerland. In 1975, he also won the cup with Basel.

In 1973, while playing at Basel, he graduated from nearby Lörrach College as a teacher of mathematics and sports. He retained his amateur status to be able to participate in the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. There, he played amongst others with Uli Hoeneß, the later Bayern Munich player and general manager who would hire him as coach in the late 1990s. One of the highlights of this tournament was the first encounter between the national sides of West and East Germany on the football pitch.

West Germany lost this match 2–3, and thus failed to reach the semifinals. In this match, Hitzfeld scored one of his five goals in the tournament. In 1975, the 26-year-old Hitzfeld accepted an offer by the then German second division side VfB Stuttgart. At the Swabian side, he was part of a legendary '100 goal offense' (the goal difference that season being 100:36) and in one match against SSV Jahn Regensburg he scored six goals, still the record for a 2.

Bundesliga player. After two years, in 1977, the team achieved promotion to the first division, the Bundesliga. Hitzfeld had by that time scored 33 goals in 55 league matches. In the Bundesliga, the club finished the season a remarkable fourth.

Hitzfeld contributed five goals in 22 matches. After three years with Stuttgart, Hitzfeld returned to what by then had become his second home, Switzerland. There, he played from 1978 to 1980 with Lugano before joining Luzern, where he finished his playing career in 1983, aged 34.