On Saturday, Rudi Völler will be retired as Managing Director Sport at Bayer 04 Leverkusen during the home game against SC Freiburg. Then some of his most beautiful and most important of the 362 professional and international goals between 1977 and 1996 will be shown.
You will also see Völler with the World Cup in 1990 or 1993 in the jersey of Olympique Marseille with the Champions League pot. But there are other scenes that describe what Rudi Völler’s 45 years in professional football are all about.
Völler between brutal foul, spitting attack and angry speech
Rudi Völler, as a Werder Bremen striker, was fouled so badly in 1985 by Bayern defender Klaus Augenthaler in a full sprint that he was out of action for five months after the championship duel with FC Bayern.
Rudi Völler, wrongly seeing the red card against the Netherlands in the 1990 World Cup round of 16, being spat on by opponent Frank Rijkaard and a few days later taking the winning penalty kick in the final against Argentina, which Andreas Brehme refined into a World Cup triumph.
Rudi Völler in the Leverkusen jersey as he comforts the crying Brehme in 1996 after Bayer 04’s 1-1 duel with 1. FC Kaiserslautern on the last matchday was enough to avoid relegation and send Brehme’s Palatine team into the second division .
Rudi Völler, how he defended a tired 0-0 draw for the national team in Iceland in 2003 in a sports show interview with Waldemar Hartmann as the German team manager with his legendary “Weissbier-Wutrede”.
Quarrelsome and forgiving
These scenes describe very well why the now 62-year-old Völler has become and remained a cult. In his public football life, Völler was straight forward on and off the field and sometimes faster with his legs or mouth than was good for him.
But in addition to being able to get back up, he could also admit when he had overshot the mark. TV presenter Hartmann received an apology for the outbreak in the TV studio.