About eighty years ago the streets of Vienna were lined with mourning. Maybe 40 thousand people, maybe 15 thousand. They walk there, in the Austrian cold, in procession, to pay homage to the greatest Austrian footballer ever. The Mozart of football, also known as Cartavelina. On January 23, 1939, Matthias Sindelar and his wife, the Italian Jewish teacher Camilla Castagnola , are found lifeless in their apartment . The official version talks about a gas leak (carbon monoxide poisoning), others advance the thesis of suicide, still others the determining role of the Gestapo. A suspicious death. The Austrian police quickly file the case, the file on his death mysteriously disappears into thin air.
But Sindelar was more than just the “football player who committed suicide”. And he was much more than just an athlete. He was born in 1903 in Kozlov, Moravia, on the border with Slovakia. Difficult childhood, he suffers from hunger, and orphan of a father who died in World War I. His frail physique does not prevent him from kicking the ball, barefoot because the shoes were used for more important things . An executive from Hertha Vienna notes this, kidnapped by Matthias’ extraordinary skill with dribbling. Atypical, elegant center forward, he loves assists and good football, he often goes up to midfield to set up the action. A Mozart of the ball , as the coach and coach Hugo Meisl calls him .
He passes to the Amateur Wiener (current Austria Vienna) where he definitely explodes. Wins two European Cups, a hat-trick of him stretches the Ambrosiana Inter in the final . He is the star of the Wunderteam , the Austrian national team of wonders, which between 1931 and 1933 won 12 games out of 16. Against the German rivals there is no match: Sindelar wins 5-0 and 6-0 in two games against Germany. This is followed by a 2-1 to Italy and an 8-2 to Hungary . Against England at Stamford Bridge Austria loses 3-4 but Mozart scores a goal dribbling practically all the opponents. An ante litteram Maradona .
In the semifinal of the Italian World Cup in 1934, Mathias was repeatedly hit by the fouls of the blue -born Luisis Monti , without an overly home referee committing anything. Sindelar was injured in that match, Austria lost 2-1 and placed fourth. It is precisely in the rehabilitation that the champion meets his future wife, Camilla Castagnola , an Italian translator.
They live in Vienna which in 1938 suffered the Anschluss, the Nazi annexation to make Greater Germany . Austria becomes a province of the Third Reich with the name of Ostmark . On April 3, 1938, to celebrate the new German conquest, the game of reunification was played at the Prater in Vienna . Ostmark challenge Germany, before the merger between the two teams. The pan-Germanization of the ball, wanted by Hitler with a single representative with the swastika on the shirt . The Anschluss also of football. Sindelar plays his last match with the Austrian national team. The uniform is the historic one, red and white, strongly desired by Matthias.
It is the only concession that the Gestapo makes.The Austrians, in fact, had the order to lose in order to enhance the sporting virtues of the Nazis on the pitch. Sindelar is not there and plays perhaps his best game of him. He runs, dribbles, makes fun of his opponents. He scores a goal, rejoices right under the SS police stand, makes Karl Sesta score another . Austria wins 2-0 . The ceremonial now imposes the Nazi salute addressed to the Reich hierarchs. But both Sindelar and Sesta refuse to raise their outstretched arm . They are the only ones not doing Sieg Heil with the next Heil Hitler.
At the subsequent World Cup in France, the German coach Sepp Herbergherhe wants him in the Reich national team. Mathias refuses, for the second time in a few months, the Nazi call. He’s too old and injured, he says. He retires shortly after, opens a bar with his Camilla before that January 23, 1939. Perhaps a suicide, perhaps a double murder. The truth will never be known. What remains true is that No repeated twice that Matthias Sindelar , the Mozart of football, said to Adolf Hitler.
Mathias SIndelar. Austrian phenomenon. He scores in Aus-Ger. Vince. He doesn’t give the “salute” to the Nazis. Murdered with his wife. pic.twitter.com/zgBjXv0QRo
– Sportellate.it (@Sportellate_it) January 27, 2014
