Goodbye to Beckenbauer, football mourns its ‘Kaiser’ Franz – Football

Another football legend leaving. Just over a year after Pelé and three days after Mario Zagallo who like him and before him became world champion as a footballer and then as a coach, Franz Beckenbauer died.

Video Farewell to ‘Kaiser Franz’

For the Italians he was the opponent with his arm in a sling at Azteca at Mexico ’70, for everyone he was ‘Kaiser’ Franz, the emperor of football, model of elegance applied to the ball and prototype of the modern defender. He will forever be part of the greats of football, it is no coincidence that FIFA included him in the list of the ten best players of the twentieth century.

To see his greatness, just look at his personal roll of honor: 3 European Cups, Intercontinental Cup, Cup Winners’ Cup, German championships and cups with the Bayern shirt, world title in 1974 and European title two years earlier with the white shirt of the national team, Golden Ball as the best European footballer in two occasions (1972 and 1976, on the first occasion interrupting the hat-trick of the other great of those years, Johan Crujyff), world champion in 1990 also as coach of the national team. The one for which, as a footballer, he had made 103 appearances, the last 59 of which were consecutive. Numbers that do not fully define his skill.

Beckenbauer was the elegance of dribbling, the perfect coordination, the throw from the outside to find the unmarked teammate. Born a midfielder, he became a libero, he was a modern player of an ancient football that was entering the future, so much so that many said that he had reinvented the role. And with that halo, he engaged in epic challenges with Johan Cruijff, with whom he later became friends, to the point of going skiing together with Kitzbuehel, in Bayern-Ajax, three European Cups each for the two best clubs of the 70s , or in the Germany-Holland World Cup final in 1974. Moments of great footballing beauty.

But what remains of the Kaiser above all isepic image of him on the pitch, dragging Germany, with his arm in a sling in the semi-final then lost 4-3 against Italy at the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. An unforgettable scene; the Western national team also lived on the saves of Sepp Maier and the goals of ‘Der Bomber’ Gerd Muller, but above all it was Franz Beckenbauer. Who had shown what he was made of four years earlier, in the 1966 world championship tournament in England, when he was just 20 years old and was already one of the leaders of the German team, having shown exceptional technical skills until the final lost against the German national team. home due to an ‘oversight’ by Soviet linesman Bakramov.

Each of his interventions was a mixture of technical perfection. “He knew how to do everything well and when to do it”, as Cruijff said of him, and on the suburban pitches, at the oratory or on the street, there were those who tried to imitate him, even trying to free themselves with a blocked arm like him at the Azteca. But no one could do it, those gestures were too difficult and those who tried to repeat them were too grim and inelegant. From midfielder, perhaps the most technical in the history of football, he was moved to libero by Helmut Schoen with the national team, to free him from marking to be conceded, and it was the apotheosis because he became the ideal of the role, according to everyone his opponent. In football, in the battered Germany after the Second World War, he had started playing on the street, with a ball made of rags, and many immediately noticed his superiority over the others.

An audition was enough for him, at the age of 13, to be taken by Bayern, after he had discarded the idea of ​​doing the same thing with the team that was then leading in Bavaria, 1860 Munich: in a match between youth teams, Beckenbauer, who was part of another team, 1906, was the protagonist of a brawl with those of 1860, and this was enough for him to ‘erase’ that society forever. So even when he became the eternal flag of Bayern he never gave up that feeling of rivalry towards his ‘cousins’, who in the meantime had sunk into the lower leagues. As a footballer he also became an advertising star, one of the first champions who also got rich through commercials, and even those who made profit their rule of life, the Americans, couldn’t help but notice him. ‘, the New York Cosmos were a sort of Harlem Globetrotters of football, and Beckenbauer ended up being Pelé’s teammate, equal to O Rei and winner of championships with him in America too, from 1977 to 1980. But The Kaiser wanted to end his career at home, as he had promised himself, and ended with two years in Hamburg.

Shortly afterwards, given the respect they had for him, the German Football Federation entrusted him with the leadership of the national team, and he took it to the World Cup final, again in Mexico, but this time in 1986, the year of Maradona’s triumph. They lost 3-2 due to a feat by ‘Pibe’ transformed into a goal by Burruchaga but they made up for it four years later in Italia ’90, at Argentina’s own expense, with Maradona in tears. Having left the national team bench in 1993, after a brief period as coach of Olympique Marseille, he returned to Bayern as vice-president, but in 1994 he became coach and won the championship. Then he was its president, fulfilling another dream. Last act before definitively entering the Olympus of football, with Pele’, Maradona, Zagallo.

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