Walter Dietrich

Walter Dietrich
	Walter Dietrich in 1928
Personal information
Full name	Walter Dietrich
Date of birth	24 December 1902
Date of death	27 November 1979 (aged 76)
Position(s)	Forward
Senior career*
Years	Team
1919–1922	FC Basel
1922–1923	Forward Morges
1923–1925	Servette FC
1925–1938	Eintracht Frankfurt
International career
1924–1928	Switzerland
Managerial career
1926–1927	Eintracht Frankfurt (player-manager)
1939	FC Basel
Medal record
Olympic Games
Representing Switzerland
Men's Football
	*Club domestic league appearances and goals

Walter Dietrich (24 December 1902 – 27 November 1979) was a Swiss footballer who started his active career by FC Basel. Via Forward Morges he moved to Servette and finally in the summer of 1925 to Eintracht Frankfurt and here he ended his active football ten years later. He played as forward.

Career

Dietrich joined Basel's first team in their 1919–20 season, but played only six test matches. He played his domestic league debut for the club in the first game of the next season, the away game on 26 September 1920 as Basel were defeated 1–4 by Young Boys.^[1] He scored his first goal for his club a week later on 3 October in the home game at the Landhof against Aarau as the two teams played a 2–2 draw.^[2]

Between the years 1919 and 1922 Dietrich played a total of 34 games for Basel scoring a total of five goals. Eight of these games were in the Swiss Serie A and 26 were friendly games. He scored one goal in the domestic league, the other four were scored during test games.^[3]

After playing one season for Forward Morges and two seasons for Servette he moved to Eintracht Frankfurt in 1925. Eintracht played in the Bezirksliga Main the highest association football league in the German state of Hesse and the Prussian province of Hesse-Nassau. Dietrich played ten seasons for Eintracht playing 208 league matches and scoring 66 goals.

Dietrich played 14 games for the Swiss national team.^[4] He was a member of the Swiss team, which won the silver medal in the football tournament at the 1924 Summer Olympics.^[5]

After his career Dietrich opened up an architecture firm. In 1937 when a stand of the first version of Riederwaldstadion burned down Dietrich's firm was pivotal in the reconstruction. In 1938 he returned to Switzerland and shortly took over his hometown club FC Basel that had just been relegated to the second tier.

Honours

Switzerland

Olympic Games
- Silver: Summer Olympics 1924

Servette FC

Swiss Serie A:
- Champion: 1924–25

Eintracht Frankfurt

Bezirksliga Main-Hessen:
- Champion: 1927–28, 1928–29, 1929–30, 1930–31, 1931–32
- Runner-up: 1932–33
Southern German Championship
- Champion: 1929–30, 1931–32
- Runner-up: 1927–28, 1930–31
German Championship
- Runner-up: 1932
Gauliga Südwest/Mainhessen:
- Champion: 1937–38
- Runner-up: 1936–37

References

^ Verein "Basler Fussballarchiv". "BSC Young Boys - FC Basel 4:1 (0:1)". Verein "Basler Fussballarchiv". Retrieved 16 November 2019.
^ Verein "Basler Fussballarchiv". "FC Basel - FC Aarau 2:2 (0:1)". Verein "Basler Fussballarchiv". Retrieved 16 November 2019.
^ Verein "Basler Fussballarchiv". "Walter Dietrich - FCB-Statistik". Verein "Basler Fussballarchiv". Retrieved 16 November 2019.
^ "National football team player Walter Dietrich". eu-football.info. Retrieved 11 November 2020.
^ "Walter Dietrich". Olympedia. Retrieved 18 August 2021.

Sources

Rotblau: Jahrbuch Saison 2017/2018. Publisher: FC Basel Marketing AG. ISBN 978-3-7245-2189-1
Die ersten 125 Jahre. Publisher: Josef Zindel im Friedrich Reinhardt Verlag, Basel. ISBN 978-3-7245-2305-5
Verein "Basler Fussballarchiv" Homepage