| Personal information | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Adolphus Franciscus König | |||||||||||||
| Date of birth | (1874-05-07)7 May 1874 | |||||||||||||
| Place of birth | Ghent, Belgium | |||||||||||||
| Date of death | 9 December 1959(1959-12-09) (aged 85) | |||||||||||||
| Place of death | Brussels, Belgium | |||||||||||||
| Position | Forward | |||||||||||||
| Senior career* | ||||||||||||||
| Years | Team | Apps | (Gls) | |||||||||||
| 1895–1897 | Sporting Club de Bruxelles | |||||||||||||
| 1897–1900 | Racing Club de Bruxelles | |||||||||||||
| Managerial career | ||||||||||||||
| 1900 | Belgium Olympic (1) | |||||||||||||
Medal record
| ||||||||||||||
| * Club domestic league appearances and goals | ||||||||||||||
Adolphus Franciscus "Frank" König (7 May 1874 – 9 December 1959) was a Belgianfootballer who played as aforward for Belgian clubRacing Club de Bruxelles.[1] He was also amanager who coached theBelgian squad that participated in thefootball tournament at the1900 Summer Olympics.[2] He was also areferee who refereed the first game of theNetherlands national team.[3] He was also a founding member of theBelgian Football Association in 1895. He wastopscorer in the Belgian First Division in two back-to-back seasons in 1898 and 1899.[4] Besides being an outstanding football player, he was also an outstandingathlete who also performed in other modalities, notablyathletics.
König was born inGhent to Swiss parents, but moved toEngland as a child to study there. While in England, he was introduced to football and developed an interest in the growing sport. In 1895 he returned toBelgium and shortly after his arrival he was one of the founding members of theBelgian Football Association on 1 September 1895.[citation needed]
He then joinedSporting Club de Bruxelles, which participated in the very first edition of theBelgian Championship in1895–96, and König helped his side to a 3rd place finish just behindAntwerp FC and championsF.C. Liégeois. The club withdrew duringthe next season and was dissolved, and most of the players, including him, decided to joinRacing Club de Bruxelles in 1897. In his first season at Racing, König helped the club win the Belgian championship, and again in1899–1900.[1]
Besides football, he practiced several other sports such asboxing androwing andathletics. He was a three-time Belgian champion in the 100m and four times quarter-mile champion. As a result, he was a very fast and dangerous player in football, being thetop scorer in the Belgian Championship two successive times in 1898 and 1899.[5]
König was a member of theBelgian squad who won abronze medal inParis, acting ascoach of a team made up almost entirely of students of theUniversity of Brussels.[2] The team lost its only game at the tournament toClub Français by 6 goals to 2.[6]
König refereed his first and last international match on 30 April 1905, aLow Countries derby betweenBelgium and theNetherlands in the1905 Coupe Vanden Abeele, ending in a 4–1 win to the Dutch afterextra-time, but more important than the result was its historic relevance since it was the Dutch's very first official game.[3]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)