2024-01-08 19:14:02
German football legend Franz Beckenbauer, world champion as a player in 1974 then as coach in 1990, died on Sunday at the age of 78, the German Federation (DFB) announced on Monday January 8.
Former captain of the West German selection in the 1970s, coach of the Mannschaft from 1984 to 1990 and former manager of Bayern Munich in the 1990s, Franz Beckenbauer had withdrawn from public life in recent years due to problems of health.
Also, major organizer of the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Franz Beckenbauer has punctuated the daily life of Germans for more than half a century, becoming the «Kaiser» (the emperor in German) to the many facets of post-war Germany.
A position adopted to his talent
Born in September 1945, the son of a post office director, Franz Beckenbauer grew up in the working-class district of Obergiesing, in the south of the Bavarian capital. He joined Bayern Munich in 1964 when he was not yet 19, and would spend the majority of his career there.
He created a tailor-made position adapted to his talent: libero, playing behind his defense but regularly coming in to create excess 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.
With the German 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.
The embodiment of German football power
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 to 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 the same Argentina, in Rome.
World Cup winner as a player and coach
Beckenbauer thus enters the legend, becoming the second man world champion as a player and coach, after the Brazilian Mario Zagallo, who also died last week. Didier Deschamps, who like the Kaiser lifted the World Cup trophy at home in 1998, joined this very exclusive club in 2018.
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 is quite logical that he takes the reins of «son» Bayern in the early 1990s, as part of 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).
Suspicions of corruption
The “Summer fairy tale”a summer fairy tale, from 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”recently estimated the former German Foreign Minister, 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.
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