After badly damaging his shoulder in the 1970 World Cup semi-final against Italy, for example, the player had returned after treatment in the 70th minute with his right arm strapped to his body and his hand resting below his heart. That the four-time German Footballer of the Year became captain of club and country was no surprise, given his confident and often inspirational actions both on and off the field. By then installed as both skipper and sweeper, Beckenbauer won both the 1972 European Championship and the 1974 World Cup – the latter played in his home city at Munich’s Olympiastadion. Between 19, he won the Bundesliga and the DFB Cup four times each, and Bayern also won the European Cup three times in succession between 19 as well as the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1967. Whatever the origin, Beckenbauer’s nickname stuck in the late 1960s, and that, incidentally, is when both he and Bayern began to hit new heights. “If you play a proper pass, you’d get it back properly, without the need to run.” “That wall was the most honest teammate you could wish for,” he declared. Beckenbauer would gracefully move forward and casually ping passes to all corners of the pitch, later putting that skill down to having spent countless hours playing one-twos against the wall of his house. There are conflicting reports as to how he became known as the Kaiser, but his elegant playing style – often playing as a libero and leading attacks from the back – certainly helped. His West Germany side went down to a cruel extra-time defeat against England in the final at Wembley, but the then-midfielder was named in the team of the tournament and took the best young player prize after scoring four goals. Later that summer, Beckenbauer – still only 20 – was one of the stars of the 1966 FIFA World Cup. Beckenbauer scored the insurance goal in the final against Duisburg to claim his first piece of silverware. Bayern lost their first ever Bundesliga game 1-0 against 1860 in August 1965, but while their local rivals won the league title, the Reds lifted the DFB Cup. Later that year Bayern pipped 1860 to the signing of Gerd Müller, too, and promotion soon followed. forced the club to dispense with expensive stars and back players from their own youth team, as well as talented footballers from the Bavarian provinces,” the Bayern website says.Īmong those young players were goalkeeper Sepp Maier and Beckenbauer, who made his debut – and scored – in a 4-0 win over St. That choice, it turned out, was a blessing in disguise for Bayern. League authorities only wanted one Munich club to be part of the newly created top flight, and 1860 Munich got the ticket because they had won the 1962-1963 Oberliga Süd. While he began working his way up through the youth ranks, after all, Bayern missed out on a place in the Bundesliga in 1963. imago/WEREKīeckenbauer’s decision would change the course of German football, although we weren’t to know that at the time. Gerd Müller, Sepp Maier and Franz Beckenbauer (l.-r.) all joined Bayern Munich at around the same time before going on to make history for the Bavarian club and Germany. “It was just fate that we both came together, and that I became a Red and not a Blue,” Beckenbauer told Bayerischer Rundfunk, when the Bavarian radio station brought König and the Kaiser together again in 2010. It was seemingly after that incident that a 13-year-old Beckenbauer decided that he would join Bayern later that year, rather than 1860 as planned. The details of the match are sketchy, many decades on, but what is not in dispute is that at one point König aimed a slap at his opponent. The final of the U14 tournament was a keenly fought affair, and Beckenbauer – then playing as a centre-forward – was involved in a running battle with centre-half Gerhard König – whose surname means king in German. He was all set to do so as well, but first he faced them in the summer of 1958 while still playing for local side SC 1906. The son of a postal worker, Beckenbauer had grown up supporting 1860, and dreamed of playing for them. The man who would later be nicknamed der Kaiser – the emperor – grew up in Giesing, a working-class district home to mostly Blues rather than Reds.
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