Matthias Sindelar is regarded as Austrian football’s greatest ever player and was also voted as Austrian sportsman of the century. He made 44 appearances for his country and scored 27 goals. The striker came from a poor family and started playing football in the Vienna streets where he quickly became know as the "man of paper" or “Mozart of football” for his ability to slip through defences. At the age of 15 he signed for Hertha Vienna before breaking into the first team and guiding FK Austria Vienna to three Austrian Cup in his first three seasons. He made his debut for the national side in 1926 scoring the winner in a 2-1 win over the Czechs. After Austria's annexation, Germany abolished the superior Austrian team and used its players to bolster its own side. But Sindelar refused to go along with the plan. On 3 April 1938, Austria played Germany in the Prater Stadium. In the last 20 minutes, Sindelar and team-mate Karl Sesta scored as the game finished 2-0. Sindelar is reported to have celebrated extravagantly in front of senior Nazi dignitaries. Within a year, he was dead, aged 35. A Gestapo file marked him out as pro-Jewish and a social democrat. There has always been suspicion about the nature of his death. Sindelar, who had become a symbol of Austrian patriotism, died in his girlfriends' apartment from carbon monoxide poisoning. Some believed he had been killed, others assumed he committed suicide. Egon Ulbrich, a lifelong friend of the forward, revealed how a local official was bribed to record his death as an accident, thereby ensuring he would receive a state funeral. "According to the Nazi rules, a person who had been murdered or who has committed suicide cannot be given a grave of honour. So we had to do something to ensure that the criminal element involved in his death was removed," Mr Ulbrich said. Sindelar died on 29 January 1939.