German football mourns the death of the best player in its history. Franz Beckenbauer, the Kaiser who commanded the world champion ‘Mannschaft’ in 1974, died on Sunday at the age of 78, according to the German news agency DPA, after spending recent times battling a series of illnesses that They had separated him from public life and turned his daily life into torment.
“With deep sadness, we announce that my husband and our father passed away yesterday, Sunday, peacefully and surrounded by his family, while he was sleeping,” confirmed the Kaiser’s wife and children, the nickname that had accompanied him since he was photographed in Vienna next to a bust of Emperor Francis Joseph I of Austria and which summarized his influence and importance within world football.
Born on September 11, 1945 in a city of Munich devastated by the Second World War, Beckenbauer took the now reviled figure of the libero to another dimension, a position that has him as the greatest historical reference and that cannot be understood without the mark he left This brilliant footballer who led the best Bayern Munich of all time and who also created some of the most glorious pages of the German team, with which he earned 103 caps and scored 14 goals.
In addition to the 1974 World Cup that he won as captain of the Federal Republic of Germany, he also won the World Cup as coach of the already unified Germany in 1990, after the ‘Mannschaft’ defeated Diego Armando Maradona’s Argentina in the final celebrated at the Olympic Stadium in Rome with a goal in the final stretch by Andreas Brehme. Beckenbauer thus became one of the three men who have won the World Cup as a player and as a coach.
His extraordinary record as a footballer also highlights the Euro Cup he won with the FRG in 1972, as well as the three European Cups he won consecutively between 1974 and 1977 commanding a Bayern Munich team that at that time dominated the Old Man with an iron fist. Continent to the sound that the Kaiser set.
Elegance personified
Beckenbauer was elegance personified on the field of play and a consummate winner who amazed with his class, sobriety and leadership capacity, to the point of becoming one of the most admired players of his time and one of the most acclaimed of all. time. In addition to the enormous collective successes he achieved with his national team and with Bayern, his career was marked with two Ballon d’Ors, in 1972 and 1976, which recognized his unique contribution to a sport that he enhanced with his art and voracity.
He hung up his boots in 1983, after a final stage in the New York Cosmos, that team that also witnessed the final blows of other legends of the caliber of Pelé or Johan Cruyff, to begin from that moment on a fruitful career in the benches and in the offices of Bayern Munich, a club of which he was coach in two different stages, president until 2009 and later honorary president. He was also one of the main people responsible for Germany hosting the 2006 World Cup, an achievement that was overshadowed by the goings-on that preceded that award and that tarnished his figure, although it was never proven that the Kaiser committed any crime.
But his last years were marked by a series of serious health problems that reduced his quality of life and kept him away from the playing fields, where he had been happy. He suffered a myocardial infarction, underwent heart surgery, suffered from Parkinson’s disease and dementia took its toll on him. He had lost vision in his right eye and doctors advised him to avoid long trips due to his heart problems, which prevented him from attending the funeral of his friend Pelé in December 2022, with whom he shared twilight times as a footballer for Cosmos. , after having cemented the legend of Bayern Munich along with other stars of the stature of Torpedo Müller and Sepp Maier. Without his enormous footprint it would not be possible to understand what the Bavarian colossus is today.
Beckenbauer played a total of 582 games, in which he registered 74 goals, with Bayern Munich, a club where he spent thirteen seasons until, already in the final stretch of his career, he moved to the United States to sign for New York. York Cosmos in 1977 and served as one of the great claims to popularize soccer in the United States. He shared the bill with other former glories like Pelé and scored 23 goals with the Big Apple team.
But his long career would still have a golden epilogue after returning to the Bundesliga in 1980 to don the Hamburg shirt and have an outstanding participation in the last of the six Bundesliga that rest in the showcases of the northern German club. However, his last dance took place at the Cosmos, where he returned in 1983 to play his last matches as a professional and close a journey that has no parallel within that prodigal incubator of talent that is German football.
2024-01-08 18:13:18
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