Helmut Kremers (born 24 March 1949) 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 le ...

who played as a full-back. His twin brother,

Erwin Kremers Erwin Kremers (born 24 March 1949) is a German former professional footballer who played as a striker. His twin brother, Helmut Kremers, also played as a German international with the two brothers playing with each other regularly. Erwin and He ...

, also played as a German international with the two brothers playing with each other regularly. Helmut and Erwin Kremers are the first ever twins to play in the

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 ...

Club career

Moving up to the

squad of

Borussia Mönchengladbach Borussia Verein für Leibesübungen 1900 e. V. Mönchengladbach, commonly known as Borussia Mönchengladbach (), Mönchengladbach () or Gladbach (; abbreviated as Borussia MG, BMG), is a professional Association football, football club based in ...

in 1967, Helmut Kremers won his first of two

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 considere ...

trophies with then lower league side

Kickers Offenbach Offenbacher Kickers, also known as Kickers Offenbach, is a German association football club in Offenbach am Main, Hesse. The club was founded on 27 May 1901 in the Rheinischer Hof restaurant by footballers who had left established local clubs in ...

in 1970. In 1972, he had joined

FC Schalke 04 Fußballclub Gelsenkirchen-Schalke 04 e. V., commonly known as FC Schalke 04 (), Schalke 04 (), or abbreviated as S04 (), is a professional German football and multi-sports club originally from the Schalke district of Gelsenkirchen, North Rhi ...

together with his twin brother

Erwin Erwin may refer to: People Given name * Erwin Chargaff (1905–2002), Austrian biochemist * Erwin Dold (1919–2012), German concentration camp commandant in World War 2 * Erwin Hauer (1926–2017), Austrian-born American sculptor * Egon Erwin Kisc ...

in 1971, he was able to lift the trophy for a second time. Unlike his twin brother, who played winger, full back Helmut had spells with other clubs after the end of his deal with Schalke, playing for

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 ...

in the 1980–81 2. Bundesliga and for

North American Soccer League The North American Soccer League may refer to: *North American Soccer League (1968–1984), a former Division I league *North American Soccer League (2011–2017) The North American Soccer League (NASL) was a professional men's soccer league b ...

team

Calgary Boomers The Calgary Boomers were a Canadian soccer team that competed in the North American Soccer League (NASL) for the 1980–81 Indoor and 1981 outdoor seasons. The team was based in Calgary and played their home games at Stampede Corral during t ...

in 1981. In total, Kremers scored 50 goals in 273 Bundesliga appearances. Together, the twin brothers made three appearances in the national team: 1973 in

Hanover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

against

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

(4-0) and in

Gelsenkirchen Gelsenkirchen (, , ; wep, Gelsenkiärken) is the 25th most populous city of Germany and the 11th most populous in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with 262,528 (2016) inhabitants. On the Emscher River (a tributary of the Rhine), it lies ...

against

France France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pac ...

(2-1) and in 1974 against

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

in a 5-0 win in

Dortmund Dortmund (; Westphalian nds, Düörpm ; la, Tremonia) is the third-largest city in North Rhine-Westphalia after Cologne and Düsseldorf, and the eighth-largest city of Germany, with a population of 588,250 inhabitants as of 2021. It is the la ...

. In 1974 he became

FIFA World Cup The FIFA World Cup, often simply called the World Cup, is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the ' ( FIFA), the sport's global governing body. The tournament ha ...

champion with

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 his own country but was never used. Nevertheless, like all members of the squad of the German World Cup team, he received the Silver Laurel Leaf on 23 September 1974. In the fall of 1981, he joined the

Memphis Americans The Memphis Americans were a soccer team based out of Memphis, Tennessee that played in the original Major Indoor Soccer League (MISL). They played from 1981 to 1984. Their home arena was the Mid-South Coliseum. A new version of the team wi ...

of the Major Indoor Soccer League for one season. In 1982/83 he put on his football boots again as player-coach of SV 08 Kuppenheim in the

Oberliga Baden-Württemberg The Oberliga Baden-Württemberg is the highest association football league in the state of Baden-Württemberg and the Baden-Württemberg football league system. It is one of fourteen Oberligas in German football, the fifth tier of the German footb ...

and succeeded Heinz Stickel in this office.

International career

Kremers played in eight games for his country, the last time on 12 March 1975, in a friendly defeat at the hands of

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. Although playing on less occasions for

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

than his twin brother (who won 15 caps), Kremers was part of the

1974 FIFA World Cup The 1974 FIFA World Cup was the tenth FIFA World Cup, a quadrennial football tournament for men's senior national teams, and was played in West Germany (and West Berlin) between 13 June and 7 July. The tournament marked the first time that the ...

winning

squad In military terminology, a squad is among the smallest of military organizations and is led by a non-commissioned officer. NATO and US doctrine define a squad as an organization "larger than a team, but smaller than a section." while US Army do ...

missed out on that due to a disciplinary decision taken beforehand.

Honours

winner

1970 Events January * January 1 – Unix time epoch reached at 00:00:00 UTC. * January 5 – The 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity scale, Mercalli intensity of X (''Extrem ...

with

* DFB-Pokal winner

1972 Within the context of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) it was the longest year ever, as two leap seconds were added during this 366-day year, an event which has not since been repeated. (If its start and end are defined using Solar time, me ...

with

Champion

1974 Major events in 1974 include the aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis and the resignation of United States President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal. In the Middle East, the aftermath of the 1973 Yom Kippur War determined politics; f ...

(without action)

After career

Kremers was FC Schalke 04 manager three times between 1989 and 1993, interim coach in 1989 and from 12 September to 6 December 1994 the last president to date. The sentence he said at the general meeting became legendary: “When we used to play against Dortmund, we didn’t even change our clothes.” After his term of office, the presidency was replaced by a change in the statutes by a board appointed by the supervisory board, which was then headed by Gerhard Rehberg. In December 2011 he ran for the office of President of

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

but was not elected. Today Kremers is managing director of a GmbH for project development in Duisburg, which he founded in 1992.

Miscellaneous

Kremers completed an apprenticeship as a wholesale merchant. In a portrait in May 1974, he was described as a "reasonable person", as a "pragmatist", "more Hanseatic cool than Rhenish cheerful nature" and as a person "between naturalness and well-concealed arrogance". Together with his twin brother Erwin, he reached 44th place in the German hit parade in 1974 as "Die Kremers" with the title The Girl of My Dreams. The two Kremers brothers lived under the same roof with their families during their careers, and they also owned a discotheque together. During his career, Helmut Kremers spoke out in favour of the abolition of transfer fees when changing clubs, since this was "a kind of human trafficking".

Literature

* Christian Karn, Reinhard Rehberg: ''Encyclopedia of German League Football. Player Encyclopedia 1963–1994.'' AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2012. , page 279. * Fritz Tauber: ''German national football player. Player statistics from A to Z.'' AGON Sportverlag, Kassel 2012, , page 69.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kremers, Helmut 1949 births Living people Sportspeople from Mönchengladbach 1974 FIFA World Cup players Borussia Mönchengladbach players Calgary Boomers players Expatriate soccer players in Canada Expatriate soccer players in the United States FIFA World Cup-winning players Bundesliga players 2. Bundesliga players Association football defenders German footballers Germany international footballers Germany B international footballers Kickers Offenbach players Major Indoor Soccer League (1978–1992) players Memphis Americans players North American Soccer League (1968–1984) players Rot-Weiss Essen players FC Schalke 04 players German twins West German expatriate footballers West German expatriate sportspeople in Canada West German expatriate sportspeople in the United States West German footballers Twin sportspeople Footballers from North Rhine-Westphalia