In our column “Green space”
Christof Siemes, Anna Kemper, Oliver Fritsch and Stephan Reich take turns writing about the world of football and the world of football. This article is part of
TIME on the weekendissue 11/2024.
It was in the spring of 1998 when I briefly liked FC Bayern Munich. Not because he was in crisis after 1. FC Kaiserslautern in one of those pleasantly weak Bayern seasons and it became apparent in the firmament of the season that the bowl would not be lifted up at Marienplatz. But because an angry Giovanni Trapattoni stomped onto the stage in the press room at Bayern, started with “There are people in this team at the moment, oh, some players are forgetting what they are,” and then got angrier and angrier and gesticulating, that it seemed as if he was conducting the orchestra of his anger through his personal fifth. It was wonderful.
Trap’s speech remains to this day, and I think about it particularly often right now because the maestro of anger turns 85 years old on March 17th.
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No matter how good a rage speech is, it will never be like Trap’s again. “What do Strunz allow?”, “Played like an empty bottle,” “I’m done” – these quotes are from German football “Ick am a Berliner,” “a big step for humanity.” Everyone knows them, knows where they come from, has something in common with them, even decades later they are used, headlines are made after them, there are countless conversations on the sidelines of this sport in which they appear casually like whales that briefly come to the surface of the water, but are always there in the sea of language usage below. But that’s not it, not alone at least. For example, I never felt that Trap was made fun of because of his broken German. Rather, it seems to me that many people felt a kind of admiration for the verve with which Trap threw himself into the obstacle course of the German language and ran through it with his head held high despite all the stumbles. Only someone who is brave and determined can do something like that. Accordingly, Trap’s rage speech is one to look up to, not one to rise above.
I think the real magic of the speech lies in its empathy. Thomas Strunz may see it differently, as do Mehmet Scholl and Mario Basler, but I hear a lot of affection in Trap’s anger. At one point he describes himself as the “father” of the players, and he seems like one: a father who is disappointed by his children’s misdeeds, who takes them personally because they are ultimately his responsibility, and who unleashes a cleansing thunderstorm. But there is nothing unforgiving or cold about Trap’s speech. And he never had that, this man whom the players called “Mister” and the press “Maestro” because of his grandeur and warmth, quite the opposite.
If you search for the speech online, you’ll see video after video, article after article, there are scientific treatises of the speech, translations from “Trapattonic” into German, there are bands that have named themselves after quotes from Trap (Grappatoni), shirts with his sayings, parties used them to advertise for elections (SPD).
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The speech may have been over after three minutes, but it’s actually been going on ever since and damn, at this moment I’m sitting here writing about it again. Because that is perhaps its only weakness: that here and there it threatens to obscure what an incredible athlete Giovanni Trapattoni was.
Even as a player, he won two championship titles, he played as a national player against Pelé, defeated Eusébio in the national championship final in 1963 and Johan Cruyff in that one in 1969, beat Uwe Seeler in the final of the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1968, became World Cup winner, all in a position that was not times more. As a coach he won ten national championships, three national cups, much to my chagrin also the German one in 1998 with Bayern. In the final, Trap substituted Thomas Strunz, Basler and Scholl played from the start. Also the European Cup Winners’ Cup, the European Cup Winners’ Cup and the UEFA Cup three times. He is no less than one of the greatest coaches of all time.
Now Trap, the maestro, is 85 years old. He has withdrawn from the public eye, his last coaching position was the Irish national team eleven years ago, after a career that began in 1957 (!) at AC Milan. “How can I be proud of a tantrum in which I made a bunch of grammatical mistakes?” Trap himself once asked in an interview. But, Maestro, you have pretty much everything to be proud of, congratulations.
In our column “Green space”
Christof Siemes, Anna Kemper, Oliver Fritsch and Stephan Reich take turns writing about the world of football and the world of football. This article is part of
TIME on the weekendissue 11/2024.
It was in the spring of 1998 when I briefly liked FC Bayern Munich. Not because he was in crisis after 1. FC Kaiserslautern in one of those pleasantly weak Bayern seasons and it became apparent in the firmament of the season that the bowl would not be raised at Marienplatz. But because an angry Giovanni Trapattoni stomped onto the stage in the press room at Bayern, started with “There are people in this team at the moment, oh, some players are forgetting what they are,” and then got angrier and angrier and gesticulating, that it seemed as if he was conducting the orchestra of his anger through his personal fifth. It was wonderful.
