Thomas Strunz (born 25 April 1968) is a German former professional

footballer A football player or footballer is a sportsperson who plays one of the different types of football. The main types of football are association football, American football, Canadian football, Australian rules football, Gaelic football, rugby ...

who played mostly as a

defensive midfielder A midfielder is an outfield position in association football. Midfielders may play an exclusively defensive role, breaking up attacks, and are in that case known as defensive midfielders. As central midfielders often go across boundari ...

. Over the course of 12 seasons, he amassed

Bundesliga The Bundesliga (; ), sometimes referred to as the Fußball-Bundesliga () or 1. Bundesliga (), is a professional association football league in Germany. At the top of the German football league system, the Bundesliga is Germany's primary footba ...

totals of 235 games and 32 goals, representing in the competition Bayern Munich and Stuttgart. He won 12 major titles with the first club. Strunz gained 41

caps Caps are flat headgear. Caps or CAPS may also refer to: Science and technology Computing * CESG Assisted Products Service, provided by the U.K. Government Communications Headquarters * Composite Application Platform Suite, by Java Caps, a Ja ...

for

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

in nine years. He was part of the squad that won

Euro 1996 The 1996 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 96, was the 10th UEFA European Championship, a quadrennial football tournament contested by European nations and organised by UEFA. It took place in England from 8 to 30 ...

Club career

Born in

Duisburg Duisburg () is a city in the Ruhr metropolitan area of the western German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Lying on the confluence of the Rhine and the Ruhr rivers in the center of the Rhine-Ruhr Region, Duisburg is the 5th largest city in No ...

North Rhine-Westphalia North Rhine-Westphalia (german: Nordrhein-Westfalen, ; li, Noordrien-Wesfale ; nds, Noordrhien-Westfalen; ksh, Noodrhing-Wäßßfaale), commonly shortened to NRW (), is a state (''Land'') in Western Germany. With more than 18 million inha ...

, Strunz started his career playing for hometown club

MSV Duisburg Meidericher Spielverein 02 e. V. Duisburg, commonly known as simply MSV Duisburg (), is a German association football club based in Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia. Nicknamed ''Die Zebras'' for their traditional striped jerseys, the club was on ...

, but moved to FC Bayern Munich aged 21. He made his

debut on 31 August 1989 in a 4–0 home win against

Hamburger SV Hamburger Sport-Verein e.V. (), commonly known as Hamburger SV () or Hamburg (), is a German sports club based in Hamburg, with its largest branch being its football section. Though the current HSV was founded in June 1919 from a merger of three ...

, and proceeded to score five goals in 20 matches in his first season. Strunz joined

VfB Stuttgart Verein für Bewegungsspiele Stuttgart 1893 e. V., commonly known as VfB Stuttgart (), is a German sports club based in Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg. The club's football team is currently part of Germany's first division, the Bundesliga. VfB S ...

for

1992–93 Year 199 ( CXCIX) was a common year starting on Monday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was sometimes known as year 952 '' Ab urbe condita''. The denomination 199 for this year has been used since t ...

, netting five times in his debut campaign before returning to Bayern after three years. In his two spells with the

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

n side he won five championship medals and two German cups, adding the

1995–96 UEFA Cup The 1995–96 UEFA Cup was the 25th season of Europe's then-tertiary club football tournament organised by UEFA. It was won by German club Bayern Munich on aggregate over Bordeaux of France. Girondins de Bordeaux went to the finals all the way f ...

in which he scored two goals in nine games. In his final two seasons he played rarely due to recurrent injuries, and retired in late 2000 as his team went on to win back-to-back league titles. After retiring, Strunz served as general manager at

VfL Wolfsburg Verein für Leibesübungen Wolfsburg e. V., commonly known as VfL Wolfsburg () or Wolfsburg, is a German professional sports club based in Wolfsburg, Lower Saxony. The club grew out of a multi-sports club for Volkswagen workers in the city of W ...

for nearly a year, being fired on 19 December 2005 – head coach Holger Fach was sacked on the same day, and the former was awarded €2.750.000 in compensation. In April 2008 he enrolled in the same capacity at lowly

Rot-Weiss Essen Rot-Weiss Essen is a German association football club based in Essen, North Rhine-Westphalia. The club currently plays in the 3. Liga, at the Stadion an der Hafenstraße. The team won the DFB-Pokal in 1953, and the German championship in 195 ...

, being fired on 12 September of the following year.

International career

Strunz made his debut for

on 10 October 1990, in a 3–1 friendly win in Sweden. He went on to represent the nation at the

1994 FIFA World Cup The 1994 FIFA World Cup was the 15th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national soccer teams. It was hosted by the United States and took place from June 17 to July 17, 1994, at nine venues across the country. The United States ...

and the victorious

UEFA Euro 1996 The 1996 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 96, was the 10th UEFA European Championship, a quadrennial football tournament contested by European nations and organised by UEFA. It took place in England from 8 to 30 ...

. During the latter competition, Strunz appeared in five of six matches (being

sent off In sports, an ejection (also known as dismissal, sending-off, disqualification, or early shower) is the removal of a participant from a contest due to a violation of the sport's rules. The exact violations that lead to an ejection vary depending ...

against

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

and subsequently suspended for the quarter-final), converting his

penalty shootout The penalty shootout is a method of determining a winner in sports matches that would have otherwise been drawn or tied. The rules for penalty shootouts vary between sports and even different competitions; however, the usual form is similar to pe ...

attempt in the semi-finals and playing the entire

final Final, Finals or The Final may refer to: * Final (competition), the last or championship round of a sporting competition, match, game, or other contest which decides a winner for an event ** Another term for playoffs, describing a sequence of con ...

against the

Czech Republic The Czech Republic, or simply Czechia, is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Historically known as Bohemia, it is bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. The ...

International goal

:''Scores and results list Germany's goal tally first.''

Post-retirement

upStrunz in 2012 After retiring, Strunz worked as football pundit for German TV channel

Sport1 Sport1 may refer to the following TV channels: * Sport1 (Eastern Europe) * Sport1 (Germany) * Sport1 (Lithuania) * Sport1 (Netherlands) Sport1 may refer to the following TV channels: * Sport1 (Eastern Europe) * Sport1 (Germany) * Sport1 (Lithuani ...

Personal life

Strunz's wife, Claudia, left him for fellow German international Stefan Effenberg. On 10 March 1998, he was one of the main targets in a furious press conference held by Bayern manager

Giovanni Trapattoni Giovanni Trapattoni (; born 17 March 1939), sometimes popularly known as "Trap" or "Il Trap", is an Italian football manager and former player, considered the most successful club coach of Italian football. A former defensive midfielder, as a p ...

, who addressed the media in broken German.

Honours

Club

Bayern Munich *

: 1989–90, 1996–97, 1998–99, 1999–2000, 2000–01 *

DFB-Pokal The DFB-Pokal ( is a German knockout football cup competition held annually by the German Football Association (DFB). Sixty-four teams participate in the competition, including all clubs from the Bundesliga and the 2. Bundesliga. It is considered ...

: 1997–98, 1999–2000; runner-up: 1998–99 *

DFB-Ligapokal The DFL-Ligapokal (, officially Premiere Ligapokal , previously DFB-Ligapokal ) or the ''German League Cup'' was a German football competition that took place before the start of the Bundesliga season, featuring the top five teams of the previous ...

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

* DFL-Supercup:

1990 File:1990 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1990 FIFA World Cup is played in Italy; The Human Genome Project is launched; Voyager I takes the famous Pale Blue Dot image- speaking on the fragility of humanity on Earth, astrophysicist ...

UEFA Cup A cup is an open-top used to hold hot or cold liquids for pouring or drinking; while mainly used for drinking, it also can be used to store solids for pouring (e.g., sugar, flour, grains, salt). Cups may be made of glass, metal, china, clay ...

: 1995–96 *

UEFA Champions League The UEFA Champions League (abbreviated as UCL, or sometimes, UEFA CL) is an annual club football competition organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) and contested by top-division European clubs, deciding the competi ...

runner-up: 1998–99 VfB Stuttgart * DFL-Supercup: 1992

International

Germany *

UEFA European Championship The UEFA European Football Championship, less formally the European Championship and informally the Euro, is the primary association football tournament organised by the Union of European Football Associations ( UEFA). The competition is conte ...

: 1996 *

U.S. Cup U.S. Cup (also known as the USA Cup, United States Cup and Nike U.S. Cup) was a soccer competition held annually in the United States from 1992 to 2000, except for the World Cup years of 1994 and 1998. The tournament, hosted by the United States ...

1993 File:1993 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The Oslo I Accord is signed in an attempt to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; The Russian White House is shelled during the 1993 Russian constitutional crisis; Czechoslovakia is peacefu ...

References

External links

* * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Strunz, Thomas 1968 births Living people Footballers from Duisburg German footballers Association football midfielders Bundesliga players MSV Duisburg players FC Bayern Munich footballers VfB Stuttgart players Germany under-21 international footballers Germany international footballers 1994 FIFA World Cup players UEFA Euro 1996 players UEFA European Championship-winning players UEFA Cup winning players