Eugen Strauss

Henri Eugen Strauss (born 4 February 1881), or Eugène Strauss as he was known in Lausanne, was a Swiss international footballer who played as midfielder in the early 1900s.

Club football

Strauss joined FC Basel's first team for their 1902–03 season and in this season he played just one friendly game. In theirnext season, 1903–04, he played his domestic league debut for the club in the home game in the Landhof on 25 October 1903 as Basel won 3–1 against local rivals FC Fortuna Basel.

During the 1903–04 Swiss Serie A season Strauss advanced to become a regular starter in the Basel team. At the end of the season, Basel were in third position in the group table.

Interesting in Strauss' career was the 1906–07 Swiss Serie A season. In this season Basel and local rivals Old Boys ended the central group level on points. As it came to the last group game of the season, at home against the Old Boys, Basel were leading the table two points ahead of their opponents. However, in this last match despite a two-goal lead, the goals being scored by Dr. Siegfried Pfeiffer and Max Senn, their local rivals turned the game and won three goals to two.

Subsequently it came to a play-off to see who would advance to the finals. The play-off match was interrupted in the 50th minute due to a storm and following the restart it ended in a 1–1 draw. Thus, it required a reply one week later and this was also drawn 1–1. The teams played 2x 10 minutes extra time, but neither team scored. Therefore, both teams agreed to play a further 15 minutes, but neither team scored. Another week later it then came to a second replay which Basel decided with 4–1 for themselves. Basel advanced to the finals, but were beaten 1–5 by west group winners Servette and 2–3 by east group winners Young Fellows Zürich. Servette won the deciding match and became Swiss champions. Strauss played in all these games and he scored his first goal for his club on 5 May 1907 in the last match of the final round against Young Fellows. It was the last goal of the match and scored from a penalty kick.

Between the years 1902 and 1907 Strauss played at least 35 games for Basel and was recorded as scoring two goal. At least 23 of these games were in the Nationalliga A and 12 were friendly games. He probably played more games than mentioned, but the documentation is not available.

Following his time wth Basel, Strauss moved on and played at least the 1907–08 Swiss Serie A season with Montriond Lausanne. Lausanne played in the championship west group and ended the season in third position in the group table.

In the Swiss Serie A 1910–11 season Strauss played for La Chaux-de-Fonds.

International

In the 1907–08 season Strauss was called up for the Swiss national team. On 5 April 1908 he played in the legendary 5–3 victory over Germany at the Landhof in Basel. This was the third national team game for the Swiss and the first for the Germans.