“I am not the Messiah,” Dörner once said (Munich, October 24, 1973).
Berlin Stadium of World Youth. Kirsten has the ball on the wing, pulls in, past Rode and gets caught on another BFC knee, very close, almost a penalty. Dörner takes the ball and a lot of running, as if he would rather threw it in himself from a tight angle, but then chipped into the six-yard box, the BFC couldn’t clear it. Gütschow warps in the supine position. Then, one minute before the break: Dresden short kick, the ball goes back from the right to Libero Dörner, the driver for what follows: Dörner dribbles briefly, then passes into midfield and follows up to the center line – you can tell he’s him wants to go further, but holds back, he lets the people in front do their thing. And how they do it: the ball goes over the right flank again into the BFC penalty area to Döschner, who pulls it off: 1-0.
Thom curled a free kick into the net to equalize in the 51st minute – “a shot on target,” says the commentator. Just a few minutes later, Dörner hit a free kick from the center line, the BFC defense struggled with it and couldn’t get the ball away. He ends up with Stübner. Stübner threw him in for another lead – “a foil stitch”. A little later Stübner on Kirsten on Minge: 3:1. Then not: offside, allegedly. Shortly afterwards, however: “Döschner nibbles two men,” cross to Minge, who has his head. inside “In the style of an English centre-forward.” The BFC runs towards Jakubowski’s goal, behind which the gang looks to the XI. party congress of the SED. Ernst’s 2:3 (88th minute) through the braces of the SGD goalkeeper came too late.
On June 8, 1985, Hans-Jürgen Dörner, known as “Dixie,” defended the FDGB Cup he had won the previous year with SG Dynamo Dresden. It’s Dörner’s fifth. While the DFB Cup has degenerated into a nuisance for the top German teams, the GDR cup competition counted for a lot, almost more than the championship. Dörner, born on January 25, 1951 in Görlitz, also got six of them. In addition, the gold medal at the Olympic Games in Montreal in 1976. Dörner only missed the 1974 World Cup in Germany and the preliminary round victory over the hosts because of jaundice.
100 international matches for the GDR, record player for Dynamo Dresden: “I’m not the messiah,” Dörner once said. The appearance of the number three on the square spoke a different language for many Dresdeners. Dörner was the playmaker from the defense, he gave his self-confidence to the ten others. The years with Dörner were the golden ones in the history of the sports community.
The career after the career, among other things as the first Bundesliga coach to come from the GDR, never really took off. Authority was not so easily transferred from the center of the field to its edges. External circumstances contributed to this. Dörner lamented the difficult situation of East German coaches in the Federal Republic after 1990. Those circumstances also suggest that Dixie Dörner, the best that Dresden and perhaps even the GDR ever had, should be christened the “Beckenbauer of the East” and not the Bavarian Qatari Riyal-Horter the »Thorns of the West«.
Dixie Dörner died in Dresden last Wednesday at the age of 70.
