The former soccer player Uwe Seelerlegendary name of German football along with the ’emperor’ Franz Beckenbauerdied at the age of 85, according to sources from Hamburger SV, the club of his entire life.
Seeler was a very charismatic and beloved character among his compatriotspresent at gatherings and sporting events after his retirement, although in recent times he was separated from public life due to successive health problems and falls.
The popular newspaper ‘Bild’ recalls in its profile that he played the historic final of the 1966 World Cup at Wembley against England, in which Germany was defeated, and that in the following, in 1970, his team was third. In other words, despite his multiple titles and honors, he was unable to lift the World Cup.
His career is identified, in addition to the German team, with Hamburgthe team of the city where he was born, on November 5, 1936.
Between 1950 and 1972 he did not wear another shirt with that of the Mannschaft or that of his lifelong team.
He made his debut in the Hamburg youth team in 1950 and four years later he moved to the first team at just eighteen years of age.
He won the league title with his team in 1960 and the German Cup in 1963. In 1968 he played the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup against AC Milan, with an Italian victory. from two goals to zero.
in his sports career he played a total of four World Cups – the one in Sweden in 1958, the one in Chile in 1962 and those mentioned in England and Mexico.
The Wembley final is a milestone in football history, as there were three controversial English goals; one of them because the ball was put in play by Nobby Stiles when executing a foul without stopping the movement of the ball; the second because the ball hit the crossbar and appeared to go over the goal line, and the third because England scored their fourth and final goal with several spectators on the pitch.
Pese a not having achieved any world titleGerman football owes Seeler moments like the mythical goal that scored England in the quarterfinals of the Mexican World Cup.
On that day, on which Germany defeated England 3-2, the German ‘Mannschaft’ is seen as taking revenge for the defeat suffered at Wembley four years ago.
The 1970 World Cup was the last of the four played by Seeler, who arrived too late for the national team to be crowned world champion in 1954 and left too early to do so in 1974. As an international he had captained the national team 40 times.
With Hamburg, Seeler scored 425 goals and was declared the German player of the year in 1960, 1964 and 1970. He only wore the shirt of another team, that of Ireland’s Cork Celtic, in 1978 as a publicity stunt for the Adidas company.
In the 1960s, Seeler had an offer from Inter Milan but turned it down, he explains, because he feared that if he failed in Italy no German team would be able to pay for his signing to repatriate him.
