German football legend Franz Beckenbauer dies at 78

World champion as a player (1974) then coach (1990), president of Bayern and major organizer of the 2006 World Cup: for more than half a century Franz Beckenbauer punctuated the daily life of the Germans, becoming the “Kaiser” of many facets of post-war Germany.

It’s a story that Franz Beckenbauer, who died Sunday at the age of 78, loved to tell, an anecdote that influenced his future choices. At the age of 12, the kid from the popular and working-class district of Obergiesing, in the south of the Bavarian capital, discovered football a few years ago at SC 1906 Munich.

In the summer of 1958, in a youth tournament, he faced the great Munich club of 1860, which he later joined. He had trouble during the meeting with one of the “Löwen” players, Gerhard König, who slapped him.

After the meeting, Beckenbauer warned: he refused to go to “this club of brawlers” and proudly committed himself to the rival, Bayern. The beginning of a very long story between Bayern and the young Franz, who in a few years would become the German “Kaiser” (emperor).

Born in September 1945 in the ruins of post-war Germany, the son of a post office director, Franz Beckenbauer joined Bayern in 1964 when he was not yet 19, and spent the most of his career.

He created a tailor-made position adapted to his talent: libero, playing behind his defense but regularly coming in to create a surplus in midfield, from where he scored the majority of his best goals.

This distinguished and elegant player, always haughty, has built an exceptional track record: four league titles and as many German Cups, two Ballons d’Or, three successes in a row in the European Champion Clubs’ Cup. , the ancestor of the Champions League.

Right arm in sling

With the selection, he achieved the European Championship (1972) and World Cup (1974) double. The icing on the cake is that the global coronation takes place at home, in the Olympic stadium in Munich, a stone’s throw from his birthplace.

Even more than Gerd Müller or Sepp Maier, his teammates within the Nationalmannschaft and Bayern Munich, Franz Beckenbauer embodied the power of German football in the 1970s.

A photo remained in the legend, a symbol of his self-sacrifice: Beckenbauer, his right arm in a sling, continuing until the end and despite the pain of a broken collarbone the semi-final of the 1970 World Cup lost against Italy (4 -3 in overtime), in what remained the “Match of the Century”.

He played his last seasons between New York and Hamburg, before hanging up in 1983 and starting a coaching career, he who claimed as a player that he had not the slightest intention of doing so.

Called to the side of the Mannschaft in the summer of 1984 after a failed Euro in France, he lifted the German selection to the final of the 1986 World Cup, lost against Maradona’s Argentina, before taking his revenge four years later, against this even Argentina, in Rome.

Beckenbauer thus becomes part of the legend, becoming the second world champion as a player and coach, after the Brazilian Mario Zagallo. The Frenchman Didier Deschamps, who like the Kaiser lifted the World Cup trophy at home in 1998, joined this very exclusive club in 2018.

Suspicions of corruption

Little attracted by the coaching bench, he returned to his job as coach at the top, and as coach after a short stint in Marseille.

On the other hand, it was quite logical that he took the reins of “his” Bayern in the early 1990s, within a triumvirate alongside Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and Uli Hoeness. He sometimes doubles his role as president with that of interim coach on two occasions, with success.

Solicited from all sides, he sat on the executive committee of Fifa, and Germany entrusted him with the mission of obtaining the organization of the 2006 World Cup, which he won in 2000 in a close vote at the expense of South Africa (12 to 11).

The “Sommermärchen”, a summer fairy tale, of 2006, however, turns into a nightmare a decade later, when suspicions of corruption tarnish the image of the Kaiser for a time.

“The Germans wanted to win the World Cup, including me. And we were happy to have a Franz Beckenbauer. There is a bit of hypocrisy, we should all blame ourselves,” the former minister recently said. German Foreign Affairs, Joschka Fischer (Greens).

Beckenbauer will also be suspended for 90 days by Fifa from any activity in football (sanction lifted after 14 days), he the former vice-president of the body between 2007 and 2011 at the time of the controversial award of the World Cup. -2022 in Qatar in December 2010.

Omnipresent in the media and on television, advertising star during and after his playing career, Beckenbauer saw his image, only for a time, damaged by these suspicions.

The announcement of his death on Monday evening sparked a wave of emotion. “I am immensely sad,” reacted Rudi Völler, sports director of the German Federation (DFB).

“World champion as a player and coach: Franz Beckenbauer was one of the greatest German footballers and for many ‘der Kaiser’, because he also made several generations passionate about German football. We will miss him”, greeted Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

For his part, Fifa boss Gianni Infantino hailed a “legend of German and world football” who “always remained modest” despite “exploits and triumphs which are engraved in history”.

His family said in a statement that Franz Beckenbauer had “fallen asleep peacefully”, surrounded by his loved ones.

With AFP