UHey Seeler, there won’t be one like that anymore! Not only former teammates of the German soccer idol say that. Since the news of the hamburger’s death on Thursday at the age of 86, half the nation seems convinced. So humble, so honest, so loyal, and that’s why he grew up so much in his homeland. A world-class striker renounces the lure of the money that Inter Milan had offered him in 1961: 1.2 million marks, unimaginable at the time.
But Seeler stayed where he came from. time of his life. And so he rose to become a sports idol, if not a role model for most German football fans. Seeler stood for reliability, which is being lost more and more, for the trust that an important sentence does not hide any sophistry that opens the way to the opposite tomorrow: “As of today,” professionals are now fond of saying, “I fulfill my goal Contract.”
Uwe Seeler was a star of the people
Uwe Seeler fulfilled something bigger. The longing not to be abandoned as soon as the wide world is open to a highly gifted person. With his decision to stay with HSV forever, he lent some of his shine on the field to all those who had no choice, who had to stay in order to survive. Seeler believably pretended not to forget for a minute how important it is to cultivate the field in which one grew up. Ambitious, passionate, successful. So he became, which no living German can claim, a star of the people, always at eye level: “Us Uwe”.
Connected to “his” city of Hamburg to the end: Uwe Seeler
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Image: dpa
The decadence of the football business these days makes Seeler appear as a fixed point for a way back to a more sensible world. How about modesty? With a departure from the ludicrous transfer fees, indecent appearing daily wages of 100,000 euros? At the beginning of the Bundesliga, the maximum payment was 1200 marks – per month, not per hour. But that was almost 60 years ago. Seeler’s rejection of Inter Milan was an issue when the Bundesliga didn’t even exist.
And with all the ties to his homeland, Seeler also had to look at his life after playing football. He received the Northern Germany representation from Adidas. And dinged around the country while the HSV team sometimes trained without him. Semi-professionals, all dependent on ancillary income. Those who rave about the good old days while repelled by the greed of the superstars, their agents, clubs and associations shouldn’t forget that. The power struggle for the still unsaturated football market, which has been trimmed up every two years to uprooted super leagues and world championships, no longer has anything to do with the world of Seelers.
This is very unfortunate in many places, if not dangerous for this world sport. The anger at the sometimes completely uninhibited commercialization has contributed to alienation among the citizens, also in Germany, which could one day fall heavily on the toes of the designers of football. At the moment nobody is in sight, least of all the president of the International Football Association, who wanted to capture the grotesque undesirable developments.
Believe in the resurgence of HSV
The task is daunting. Because the desire to return to Uwe’s world overlooks the great consequences of professionalization. Today young players, now also female players, can go out into the world and develop their talent in comparison to others, maybe better. Even if it seems obvious: In most cases, a young professional cannot be persuaded to leave the home club by the paycheck alone. Discovering another culture, if only that of football, brings a wonderful movement to the sport.
Would the Germans have given their performances an inspiring lightness with the Spanish flow of play if they had stayed at home, or would that be the case without the coach transfers? Despite all the justified criticism, globalization has also done the culture of the game good, has inspired players to raise their skills to a fascinating level.
Seeler enjoyed this progress and watched enthusiastically from Norderstedt at the new artists on the ball. The question of what would have become of him in Italy is obvious, but it is pointless. The only thing that is certain is that he never regretted his path, that he always knew what is ultimately worth more than all fame and fortune: homeland. “I can’t eat three steaks a day,” he reportedly said. A modern-day seer would have felt nauseated at the sight of a steak served with gold leaf. However, he would rule out the possibility that someone like him would no longer exist. Seeler was an optimist. He believed to the last in the resurgence of his HSV.
