Leopold Šťastný

Leopold Šťastný (born 23 May 1911; died 14 May 1996) was a Slovak football player and coach.

Šťastný played before the Second World War for 1. ČsŠK Bratislava as defender. The club is named today Slovan Bratislava. The played in the Státní liga, the highest Czech league. In 1935 Bratislava reached the 5th place. In the same year Šťastný played his first of two match es for the Czech team versus Austria.

During the Second World War an independent Slovakian state existed with an own football league. Bratislava won the league in 1940, 1941, 1942 and 1944. He also played once in the national football team.

After the war he started his coaching career. He was three times (1949 - 1951, 1954 - 1957 and 1963 - 1965) coach of his former club Slovan Bratislava and won 4 times the Czech championship. 1966 he went to Austria and became coach of FC Wacker Innsbruck and led the club to national honours. 1968 he became coach of the Austrian national football team.(15 W, 16 D, 18 L) [1] He stayed till 1975 when he retired due to health reasons. After this he was still working 4 years for the Austrian Football Assosciation. He was founder of the Austrian Schülerliga, a football competition for Austrian schools. 1980 he went to his son in Canada but came back to Austria each year to see the finals of the Schülerliga.[1] To honour his work a small street in Vienna was named after him.

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