A game-changer, Franz Beckenbauer passes away at 76

STEVE GOLDBERG

Franz Beckenbauer in training before the 1982 FIFA World All-Star Game at Giants Stadium in Secaucus, N.J.

FC Bayern Munich is known around the globe as the dominant team in German soccer and one of the top clubs in the world. But it wasn’t always that way and might not have been at all if an altercation at a junior tournament final hadn’t happened.

That incident swayed a young Franz Beckenbauer, who would later become one of the most influential players in the history of the game, to join the youth system of Bayern Munich over that of TSV 1860 Munich, which was the far bigger and more popular team in the Bavarian capital at the time.

Given the nickname Der Kaiser (The emperor) by media for his ability to control the flow of a match with his vision, elegant style, and seemingly effortless manner, Beckenbauer passed away on Sunday at 76 years old.

Originally a center-forward as a youth player, and later a midfielder, the truth was that Beckenbauer could play anywhere on the pitch. His influence on the game found its soul when a coach moved him further back to liberate him from the tight marking that lessened his effect up top. Playing as a centerback, in what was then the favored sweeper position in a four-defender system behind another central defender called the stopper, he was given license to move anywhere on the field he saw fit to impact the play. Eventually, his position was known as the libero.

Rising through the ranks at Bayern, he joined the professional team in 1965 and the club’s fortune began to grow. Through 1977, when he left to join Pele with the New York Cosmos in the North American Soccer League, Bayern won five Bundesliga titles in a far more competitive league, and three European Cups, the equivalent of what is now the Champions League.

As the captain of Der Mannschaft, the West German national team, he won the FIFA World Cup trophy in 1974, and would do so again as the team’s coach in 1990.

Beckenbauer was honored with the Ballon d’Or, awarded to the best player in the men’s game, in 1972 and 1976, becoming the only defender ever to win the award twice.

Before joining the Cosmos, Beckenbauer was first presented to the broader American soccer audience on a television show called “Soccer Made in Germany,” which aired beginning in 1976 on public television stations including WTVI in Charlotte.

Working for the Atlanta Chiefs while in college at the University of Georgia, I had the opportunity to meet my favorite player when Cosmos came to play in 1979. The year before I had traveled with the UNC team to Munich for a summer tour and had wrangled my way into several weeks of training with Bayern’s amateur reserve side where photos of a young Beckenbauer’s junior teams adorned the walls.

One of the most famous athletes in the world, he was more than gracious in chatting with a college student about his time in Munich.

A couple of years later, he was still as cordial and giving when I was writing about the game and the Cosmos in New York, or when randomly crossing paths on a Manhattan street.
Covering my first World Cup in 1986 for USA Today, I was one of the few American journalists there.

After the semifinal game at Estadio Jalisco in Guadalajara, much of the media didn’t get a chance to ask our questions to Beckenbauer after Germany’s 2-0 win over France. It was a world before mixed zones so some of us went out to where the team buses were stationed.

The team and staff walked past us, smiling but not stopping, and got on the bus, so I was I yelled out in my broken German, “Franz, do you remember me from the Cosmos?” Beckenbauer peeked out the door and waved me onto the bus where he politely answered a few questions I needed for my story, and which I shared with my colleagues.

West Germany would lose that World Cup final 3-2 to an overachieving and worthy Argentina side that would cement Diego Maradona as another of the world's all-time best players.

Four years later in Italy, working for TNT, I witnessed Beckenbauer and West Germany avenge that loss against a far less magical and far more negative Argentina still driven by Maradona with a 1-0 win in Rome’s Olympic Stadium.

Beckenbauer became the first man to both captain and manage a World Cup winning team, and only the second man, after Mário Zagallo of Brazil to win the World Cup as a player and team manager. Zagallo, who passed away at 92, two days before Beckenbauer, won World Cups in 1958 and 1962, and coached his country to the title in 1970.

France’s Didier Deschamps equaled Beckenbauer, captaining Les Bleus to the title in 1998 and leading his team from the bench in 2018.

“It was a big shock, although I knew Franz wasn’t well,” said former West Germany captain Lothar Matthäus. “His death is a loss for soccer and the whole of Germany. He was one of the biggest, as a player and coach, but also away from the field. Franz was an outstanding personality, not just in soccer, and he was recognized all over the world.”

“The Kaiser is gone,” said French soccer great Michel Platini in a statement to The Associated Press. “He represented elegance, kindness, and friendship. He was a life companion for a very long time: he brought me to soccer like Pele, Cruyff or Charlton. He made German soccer, but also world soccer. For me, he was the epitome of class, both on and off the pitch. Mister Beckenbauer is gone.”

In almost every tribute you’ll read about Franz Beckenbauer, the word “Gentleman” will be used to describe him. That’s just who he was in my experience with Der Kaiser, a favorite player who became a favorite person.

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