“He has done more for the image of the Germans than diplomacy in 50 years” – Libération

“Light of German football”, the man who grew up in the middle of the ruins of Munich was more than a footballer: he allowed his country to present a light and open image to the world.

He was everything the Germans dreamed of being: elegant, radiant, light, casual, full of success and above all open to the world. If he had a strong Bavarian accent, very “provincial” for the Germans, he also had a charisma which gave him an international stature. As one football commentator put it, Franz Beckenbauer was the “light of German football”.

He was more than just a footballer. “He has done more for the image of Germans abroad than diplomacy in 50 years and 10 Goethe Institutes,” said Viennese writer Andre Heller, former cultural coordinator of the FIFA World Cup in Germany in 2006. of which Franz Beckenbauer was the architect. “He was a German hero who did not frighten foreigners,” analyzes Bavarian novelist Albert Ostermaier. “Do we still need a chancellor when we have our Franz?”, quipped the famous television presenter Harald Schmidt.

“From petty bourgeois to emperor”

Born in Munich on September 11, 1945, Franz Beckenbauer was anything but a chauvinist. His mother instilled in him values ​​that were not common in post-war Germany. “She said that there were only human beings on earth, whatever their skin color, religion or sexual orientation,” says her brother Walter. in a biography broadcast on the first channel of public television (ARD)scheduled, by chance of the calendar, the day of the announcement of his death.

Franz Beckenbauer, father of three children at 23, was first and foremost an exceptional footballer. His career began on the street and in simplicity. In the 1950s, this postman’s son played football on the vacant lots of the working-class district of Giesing, in the middle of the post-war ruins. “From being a petty bourgeois, he managed to climb the social ladder to become emperor,” the art historian Horst Bredekamp once described. He will especially mark the history of FC Bayern, where he played from 1959 to 1977 in the first team, then which he chaired from 1994 to 2009. He joined at the age of 14, at a time when the players’ jerseys were not do not yet bear the name of sponsors. He won the championship four times with the club – still very modest at the time – (1969, 1972, 1973 and 1974). With the German national team, he won the World Cup as a player but also as a coach, a feat achieved by the Brazilian Mário Zagallo (who died the day before the Kaiser’s death) and the Frenchman Didier Deschamps. “His game was so perfect that he almost became arrogant,” says Sepp Maier, legendary goalkeeper of Bayern Munich and the Mannschaft.

“Summer fairy tale”

His departure for the United States in 1977 was a break in his life. His transfer to the American club Cosmos New York was seen as a betrayal by the Germans. But he finally discovers the world! He can finally walk in the street without being recognized, go to the opera, to a restaurant without being disturbed. “Even in Central Park, not a single person recognized him,” his brother recalled on ARD.

When he returned to Germany, he ended his career in Hamburg, as a player. Nobody imagines that he will later become coach of the Mannschaft and then organizer of the Football World Cup in Germany in 2006. It will be a “summer fairy tale”, remember the Germans who had presented to the whole world in the image of their idol: light and open to the world.

After the revelations in Spiegel, which claimed that he had corrupted four members of Fifa to obtain the organization of the World Cup in Germany, he withdrew from public life. He was also widely criticized for his support for Qatar as a member of the FIFA executive committee (2007-2011), notably after declaring that he had “never seen a single slave” on the emirate’s construction sites.

“He was the pride and the face of the World Cup in Germany, he became the face of corruption in football,” summarizes Albert Ostermaier. The death of his son in 2015, at the age of 47, will be another break in his life. Stephan Beckenbauer was the only one of his many children, from several marriages and an extramarital affair, to choose a football career.