Tuesday, January 9, 2024
Year : 1, Issue : 19
Beckenbauer, one of only three men to win the World Cup as player and as a coach, passed away on Sunday, the DFB said.
Former captain of the German team in the 1970s, Beckenbauer had in the last years been suffering from health problems and lived mostly withdrawn from the public eye in Salzburg, just across from the German border.
Known in football-obsessed Germany as ‘the Kaiser’ meaning ‘the Emperor’, Beckenbauer played a central role in some of the country’s greatest sporting achievements, but his legacy was later tarnished for his involvement in scandals surrounding Germany’s successful bid to host the 2006 W orld Cup. He captained West Germany to the 1974 World Cup title on home soil when they beat the Netherlands 2-1 in the Munich final, then managed the team that beat Argentina 1-0 in Rome to lift the trophy at Italia 90.
Beckenbauer, a commanding figure on and off the pitch, was named European footballer of the year in both 1972 and 1976. He made 424 appearances in the Bundesliga, scoring 44 goals, including in a 13-year spell for Bayern, before joining Hamburg and New York Cosmos, where he finished his playing career in 1983. Beckenbauer had stints as manager in club football at both Bayern and Marseille, winning the French league title in 1991 and the Bundesliga in 1994.
In 1996, he stopped coaching and his role as president of Bayern led to a place on the Executive Committee with football’s governing body FIFA. Off the field, Beckenbauer led Germany’s successful bid to host the 2006 World Cup, a successful tournament that is still nostalgically referred to in Germany as ‘das Sommermaerchen’ — ‘The summer fairytale’.
Source: Agence France-Presse, Berlin
