In order to shorten his speech a little for the benefit of the guests, he would continue it amidst the constant applause, said Christoph Daum, but the economical procedure was only marginally successful. The screening of the film about the life and work of the jubilarian Daum, who had just turned 70 on Tuesday, which was available on Sky from Friday, had lasted 80 minutes. Now it was time for his thanks to the festival community gathered in a Cologne cinema – and they were comprehensive and lengthy. Birthday guests who had hoped that the skipped applause trick would let them off to dinner at the nearby Brazilian restaurant a little earlier needed patience, patience and more patience. The film didn’t last much longer than Daum’s greetings.
At the same time, it was impressive how Daum welcomed friends, companions and benefactors with never-ending enthusiasm and warmth: so many people with well-known and not so well-known names, whom he thanked for their appearance with personal dedications, which made the long speech seem like one big one hug sounded. This man, about whom festival visitor Michael Ballack said that he was “always loud and controversial”, obviously made many lasting friendships over the course of his very loud and sometimes spectacularly controversial existence as a football coach and Zampano.
Perhaps Matthias Sammer wasn’t even exaggerating with his interpretation in the film that Daum was “endowed with charity.” Uli Hoeneß, once the ultimate football and now life enemy, was not present, but an at least peaceful dialogue between the two up at Tegernsee is sufficiently documented in the film.
This evening and on the cinema screen it was, on the one hand, about the football man Daum, who did not achieve complete triumph everywhere – see Bayer Leverkusen’s Unterhaching trauma in 2000 – but who nevertheless celebrated great to huge successes in a reliable sequence, such as in Cologne, Stuttgart, Istanbul, Vienna or Bruges – and who also always entertained the audience very well. On the other hand, in addition to the sport, the focus was also on the patient Christoph Daum, who was in the intensive care unit of a hospital in New York in May because of lung cancer. “He felt really bad,” said Clemens Tönnies on the evening in Cologne, “I thought: Wow, hopefully nothing happens.” At that time, editorial offices were already drafting obituaries.
“Here we see our Christoph again, who inspires everyone in his way of motivating people.”
But now Daum stood on stage, very lively and full of life, and happily announced in various cinema foyer interviews that he had already undergone 22 chemotherapy treatments. The next goal is now to convert the acute state into a chronic state and thus control the cancer to some extent. Daum has never been afraid to talk publicly about private things that others would consider intimate, and he is so open about the impressions of his illness. The doctors, we learn in the film, praise him for this – and for the fighting spirit that also made him strong as a football coach.
According to Rudi Völler, Daum is doing an exemplary job by addressing his illness in an unbiased manner as a well-known person, “in order to give people with the same fate a bit of hope. Here we see our Christoph again, who inspires everyone in his way of motivating people.” The DFB sports director gave the prologue before the cinema curtain opened: a light yet meaningful speech that, incidentally, did not exceed any time limit. It also contained a typical Rudi Völler tip. He hasn’t seen the film yet, he said, “but I know that it is definitely more gripping and more interesting than the documentary about the national team in Qatar.”
