Marcel Reif (74) moved the Bundestag to tears last week with his speech in memory of the victims of the Nazi era. The TV legend tells the story of his father Leon, a Polish Jew who was saved from the deportation train on the way to the extermination camp in the Second World War, in detail in episode 1 of the football podcast “Phrasenmäher”. Episode 2 is now about the best anecdotes of his career – and how he thinks about the new way of commenting.
Mature reveals…
► Whether he can do something with terms like “expected goals”, in the “box”, there are still “five minutes to go”, or: the “six player far from the ball” plays “chip balls” over “the last chain”?
Reif: “Of course I can do something with it because I know what is meant. But I find it disrespectful to my mother-in-law. This is what you can talk about when you do a coaching course at the Hennes-Weisweiler Sports School – but not for a large football audience. With such expressions I say goodbye to the community. Someone might want to show that they could easily train a fourth division team as a reporter in their part-time job. But is that what he is paid to do? Definitely not.”
Mature is on a first-name basis with Bayern Munich’s Uli Hoeneß – but both still speak plainly to each other
Photo: Dennis Brosda
► How Uli Hoeneß once shouted on the phone because Susi Hoeneß didn’t like the Reif comment at the Bayern game.
Reif: “Uli Hoeneß offered me first name at some point, and then my phone rang after a Bayern game. I’m just standing in the kitchen when the following dialogue develops…”
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★★★
“Hoeneß here.”
“Uli, how are you?”
“That doesn’t matter now. So: As you commented on our game, THAT WON’T WORK AT ALL! AN IMPUDENCE!”
“Did you hear it yourself?”
“No, but my wife told me…”
“Well, you’ll have to listen to that yourself before we continue the conversation.”
★★★
Reif: “At some point Uli once said to me: ‘You’re not wrong sometimes, but we don’t want to hear it from you. We know it ourselves exactly.’”
► When he made peace with the BVB fans, who even attacked his car before the 2015 derby against Schalke.
Reif: “I had a not entirely unbroken relationship with the Dortmund fan base for many years. Many people have accused me of bringing Antenne Bayern back into the stadium and of cultivating an intolerable level of loyalty to Bayern. At some point Christoph Biermann, my assistant for many years, who has good connections to the fan scene, called me and said that I should watch the BVB game against Juventus Turin that evening: ‘I got a call from the BVB Ultras: Tell the Reif ‘Let him look!’
So I turn on the television and there is a panning shot over the south stand, where a banner with my statement before Lars Ricken’s 3-1 win in the 1997 Champions League final is hanging over 40 or 50 meters: “Lup now!” That was the peace agreement. The photo of it hangs in my office.”
Do you understand that? Marcel Reif recreates a legendary TV moment
Source: BILD February 6, 2024
► Which coach he didn’t get along well with
Reif: “At the beginning with Louis van Gaal. He had a kind of test. When he shook hands, he almost crushed your own hand with his big paws, and he stared into your eyes and waited to see if you would flinch away. At some point I said to him: ‘You know what, Mr van Gaal? I’m the same age as you. I don’t feel like this nonsense!’ Markus Hörwick, Bayern’s press spokesman, collapsed next to me because he realized that there was going to be a crash here.”
After that, van Gaal became friendlier. Reif: “If I had signaled to him back then that I was afraid of him, I would have been lost. Then you have no chance with him. But if you hold on and show him that you won’t let anything like that happen to you – then everything will be fine.”
Marcel Reif on the Phrasenmäher podcast with Henning Stieft
Photo: NIELS STARNICK / BILD
► Why he doesn’t like to talk about the broken post in Madrid and the legendary statement: “A goal would be good for the game!”
Reif: “You don’t have to be ashamed of it. We’ve succeeded in something that happens when you fool around with a good friend like Günther Jauch. At one point I thought: This is the semi-final of the Champions League and we’re talking nonsense like that, it doesn’t even exist. Günther said immediately afterwards: ‘We’ll get a prize for that.’ I didn’t want to be seen as a clown, but as a football commentator.”
► Why he never forgets an encounter with honorary captain and Lautern legend Fritz Walter.
Reif moved with his family from Israel to Kaiserslautern in the fifties and played for FCK in his youth: “I saw Fritz Walter’s farewell game in the stadium in 1958 and met him one day in the interior of the Betzenberg for an interview. Just before I want to leave, he shakes my hand and says: “You played with us once? Then I’m Fritz for you!” I don’t think I washed my hand for two weeks. The Grimme Prize, the Bavarian Television Prize, I’m giving you everything again just because Fritz said to me: ‘I’m Fritz!’”
★★★
His Bundestag speech moved everyone about what Reif experienced behind the scenes
Source: BILD 02/02/2024
At the end of the phrase mower, Reif answers three yes/no questions:
Does the ARD sports show have to be grandfathered in the next time TV rights are awarded?
Reif: “No, the time for sacred cows is over.”
Is the current gym running late?
Ripe: “Yes!”
Do you miss being a commentator at a top game?
Reif: “No, not a bit. It has been told. Everything I do now is the next step.”
You can find the phrase mower wherever podcasts are available (including Spotify and Apple Podcasts). It’s definitely worth listening to!
2024-02-07 07:08:29
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