Germany is saying goodbye to its greatest football icon: Franz Beckenbauer. FC Bayern hosted a large memorial service in the Allianz Arena on Friday, January 19th. sport.de shows the Kaiser’s farewell in a live stream.
Companions, friends and fans will say goodbye to the face of German football in Munich on Friday. sport.de broadcasts the RTL/ntv special program “Farewell to the Emperor – Funeral Service for Franz Beckenbauer”, from 2:35 p.m., live in the stream (the video opens in the article image above).
König and Jauch lead the show
RTL presenter Florian König leads the broadcast from the FC Bayern stadium, for whom Beckenbauer made history for 13 years as a player, later as a coach and for many years as president. With Günther Jauch, König has a long-time companion of the football legend at his side.
Beckenbauer died on January 7th at the age of 78 after a long illness. The Kaiser shaped German football in the world like no other, and was perhaps the first German to embody elegance and aesthetics after the Second World War.
Franz Beckenbauer: The greatest German footballer in history
He won the German championship four times with Bayern and once with HSV. At Munich’s peak, Beckenbauer also lifted the European Cup as captain three times (today’s Champions League). The libero also won everything in the DFB jersey: the 1972 European Championship and the 1974 World Cup in his own country.
After his playing career, Beckenbauer became team manager of the German national soccer team, with whom he also reached the summit. In 1990 the team won the World Cup trophy in Rome. Beckenbauer is one of only three people who managed to become world champion as a player and coach.
As an official, Beckenbauer brought the 2006 World Cup to Germany – the rest is history as a “summer fairy tale”. Before the tournament was held, he traveled tirelessly around the world and became the country’s unofficial foreign minister. Hardly any German was (and is) better known worldwide than Beckenbauer.
Now thousands in the stadium and millions on the screens give the emperor a final escort.