As team boss, Franz Beckenbauer was world champion, German champion and UEFA Cup winner. Also because he retained his lightness as a player after his football career.
This little video snippet from the BR archive will stay in your memory. The 20-year-old footballer Franz Beckenbauer from FC Bayern Munich is standing there, the picture is black and white, he looks into the camera and says with conviction: “I don’t want to have anything to do with football later. And being a coach is out of the question for me .”
Short cut to the next video snippet, which probably every German football enthusiast knows: 25 years later, Franz Beckenbauer is walking in a suit, lost in thought, across the World Cup final lawn under the Rome night sky, a gold medal bobbing above his tie. Beckenbauer is one of four world champion coaches of the German national team – after Sepp Herberger in 1954 and Helmut Schön in 1974 (with Beckenbauer as a player) he won the title with the German selection in 1990, followed by Joachim Löw in 2014.
As National coach an exception
Yes, it’s a truism, but: life always turns out differently than you think. Especially in the life of Franz Anton Beckenbauer, in which things always fell into place. But just as Beckenbauer was different from his teammates and opponents on the football field, he also reinvented the coaching profession in a certain way.
In the video: Klaus Augenthaler about Franz Beckenbauer
The Kaiser was not a “normal” football coach, simply because he did not have a coaching license – and therefore led Germany’s national football team as “team boss” for six years from 1984 onwards – as Jürgen Klinsmann later did at the 2006 World Cup summer fairytale. His Assistant trainers with training license: Horst Köppel (1984-86) and Holger Osieck (until 1990).
Brehme’s penalty makes Beckenbauer a world champion as a player and coach
His coaching style? A bit like being a footballer: I didn’t know much before, never dogmatic, but always outspoken: “Let’s go and play football!” He is said to have shouted nothing more and nothing less to his team before the 1990 World Cup final in Rome.
In Beckenbauer’s opinion she was the best of the tournament, that had to be enough. In the end they won 1-0 against Argentina thanks to a penalty from Andreas Brehme. Apart from Beckenbauer, only Mario Zagallo and Didier Deschamps have achieved the feat of becoming world champion as a player and as a coach.
In the video: Iconic images from Rome – Beckenbauer alone on the lawn
Application via newspaper – strange appointment as national coach
Before Beckenbauer, iron discipline was one of the commandments of the German national football team. Things became a little more relaxed with Beckenbauer; even as a player, he didn’t like the isolation of the Malente sports barracks at all, even at the 1974 World Cup. And so he gave his players a little more freedom, and the players’ wives and families were also allowed into the World Cup quarters. Beckenbauer himself was also in demand as a babysitter.
“It was like a vacation. We were together for two months, there wasn’t even a theater,” said Brehme in a BR documentary from 2010 on the occasion of the 20th anniversary. The team also once went on a boat trip on Lake Como – on the boat of Lothar Matthäus, then a player at Inter Milan. Beckenbauer’s ulterior motive, to strengthen team spirit and ensure relaxation with the family atmosphere in the truest sense of the word, was completely successful.
Beckenbauer’s appointment as national coach was also strange. After the botched European Championships in 1984, Jupp Derwall resigned and the search for a successor was difficult. Beckenbauer told the “Bild-Zeitung” that he could imagine a position as technical director, but not as a coach. The next day the headline promptly read: “Derwall over – Franz: I’m ready”. He already had the job – and the 20-year-old footballer at the beginning of the text was refuted.
Documentary “Italia 1990 – Germany is football world champion”
Also successful as a coach with FC Bayern
In 1986, the Munich native led the German team to the World Cup final, which was lost to Diego Maradona’s Argentina. The dream of winning the European Championship at home in 1988 ended in the semi-finals before the golden evening in Italy’s capital came two years later. As he walked alone across the grass field in Rome, he already knew that he had played his last game as DFB team boss. The players were now allowed to call him “Franz”.
Actually, things could have come full circle for Beckenbauer, but life turned out differently than he thought. First he began an unforeseen interlude as team boss of Olympique Marseille, then he stepped in as coach again – during his time as (vice) president of FC Bayern Munich. In 1993/94 he took over from Erich Ribbeck, who was on leave, and won the German championship. In 1996, he succeeded Otto Rehhagel on an interim basis – and won the UEFA Cup. He remained FCB president until 2009.
Beckenbauer missed the world championship meeting in 2023
Beckenbauer represents a successful era not only as a player, but also as a coach. But – as already mentioned – the fun wasn’t neglected here either. The 1990 World Cup team has become such a close-knit group that they still meet in the summer every year to commemorate their title.
Actually always there: Franz Beckenbauer. In 2023, however, he was absent for health reasons – and yet somehow he was there: his ex-players sang his hit “Good Friends” together, and some had tears in their eyes. “Franz Beckenbauer created this unique solidarity in this team. No one else. We owe everything to him!” said the 1990 captain Lothar Matthäus to “Bild”.
Died last Sunday Franz Beckenbauer at the age of 78.
Documentary: “The ball was my friend”
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Source: Beckenbauer January 8, 2024 – 8:30 p.m
