Island, wasn’t there something? Exactly. It was almost exactly 18 years ago to the day when team boss Rudi Völler in the Laugardalsvöllur national stadium in Reykjavik exploded after a desolate 0-0 for the national soccer team in the European Championship qualification and for what is probably the most legendary speech in DFB history cared.
Völler’s choice of words on September 6, 2003 was rough. The day after, the now 61-year-old managing director of the Bundesliga club Bayer Leverkusen apologized. His settlement with critics and experts, whom he scolded “gurus”, culminated first on television and then also in the press conference with the emotional sentence: “I can no longer hear this shit.” Völler looked red at the time.
The weather was bad, the game of the World Cup runner-up for the lead wolves Oliver Kahn and Michael Ballack was bad. And Völler’s mood got really bad when he had to go to the tiny TV studio to see ARD journalist Waldemar Hartmann. As Völler waited for the interview to start, he had to listen to moderator Gerhard Delling and expert Günter Netzer tearing up the national team at home.
“Delling, that’s a mess”
Völler’s blood pressure rose every second. Then he started. “Delling, what he says is a mess. The story with the low point, and another low point. And another low point. ”He could“ no longer hear this cheese after every game ”in which no goal had been achieved. “I’ve been sitting here for three years now and I always have to listen to the bullshit,” rumbled Völler as he started driving.
Oh, “the shit that is always talked about”, the indignant “Ruuuuuudi”, adored by the fans, said. In addition to Delling, he also attacked the 1974 world champion Netzer directly. “Günter, what shit they used to play, you couldn’t go there at all in the past, they played standing football,” Völler said.
Hartmann, who had watched the game in the warm, was not spared either. “You’re sitting here loosely on your chair, you have drunk three wheat beers,” rumbled Völler. The attack did not harm “Waldi” Hartmann; in retrospect it won him a lucrative advertising contract with a Bavarian wheat beer producer.
Nobody could demand that Germany simply clean up the Icelanders 5-0 in passing, complained Völler: “But that’s how you all talk.” And national coach Hansi Flick could be confronted with this expectation at the game in Iceland on Wednesday.
At that time, Völler let out what had been “on his mind” for a long time. He complained about the “gurus who at some point played football”, whether “Kaiser” Franz Beckenbauer, Netzer or the newspaper columnist Paul Breitner at the time: “At the moment there is an upward curve in Germany, this malice, this criticism . “
Völler wanted to protect his players in the fall of 2003. “I could take it easy for myself, nobody criticizes me,” he said. “Mess”, “Opinion making”, “the very last thing”, that’s how the world champion of 1990 raged. His predecessors, Berti Vogts and Erich Ribbeck, would have “put up with it all, had to swallow it all over and over”. He does not. Rudi Völler struck back.
The day after, Völler had himself under control again and apologized for the form of his incendiary speech. “I admit that the choice of words was a bit rough.” In the matter, he stood by his statements. At the time, Beckenbauer reacted understandingly to the outbreak of his former player in the dpa conversation. “That had pent up with Rudi, that is human. The horse ran away with him. “He recalled his time as a national coach:” I did that a few times, for example at the 1986 World Cup in Mexico. “
Völler’s tirade even had a musical aftermath. The Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Cologne set it to music in a song. The basis for this was the version “There is only one Rudi Völler”. In addition, Völler’s core sentences such as “I can’t hear such shit anymore” or “I don’t want everyone to just scream Rudi, Rudi” were mixed up. Let’s see how long the game reverberates this Wednesday (8.45 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for World Cup qualification and on RTL).
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