Wilhelm Meisl (26 December 1895 in Vienna – 12 June 1968 in Locarno) was an Austrian-Jewish sports journalist in the 20th century. He was the brother of Austrian national football manager Hugo Meisl. Meisl's writings did much to transform how football was perceived and played throughout continental Europe. In 1955, he coined the phrase 'The Whirl' to describe the play of his brother's Austrian 'Wunderteam' of the 1930s. He wrote: "We must free our soccer youth from the shackles of playing to order, along rails as it were. We must give them ideas and encourage them to develop their own".