He, the big star of HSV, was badly injured. And hardly anyone really knew what was to follow. How long he was absent – or if he would even never return to the pitch. The premature end of his career at 28 threatened. “Yes, that’s what I was told. So I said: Wait a minute, I want to get well first.”
“If that doesn’t work, you can close your practice”
Everything was dependent on a successful operation. Kurt Fischer was the decisive man. The HSV team doctor was supposed to perform the surgery, but he had little experience. Seeler: “I think it was his first Achilles tendon operation. But Kurt, who I knew was a good surgeon, said: ‘I’ll find out’. I then just said out of flax: ‘Well if if that doesn’t work, you can close your practice.’ Then he laughed, but thank God it went well,” Seeler recalled.
Fischer succeeded in the operation, there were no complications. And in July, less than six months after the injury, he was back on the pitch – with a special Adidas shoe. “In the first friendlies I always played for half an hour or three quarters of an hour or even a little longer. In August I played league games again. And my boss, old Adi (Adi Dassler, editor’s note), who has made me the special shoe with a padded heel that I then played with for almost two and a half years.”
The first big game for Seeler since the injury was in September 1965. Seven months after the injury, “Uns Uwe” met Sweden with the German national team in the World Cup qualifier. A win was a must in order to buy a ticket for the tournament in England: “Back then, Helmut Schön was told that he would be crazy to field me.”
But Schön put up Seeler and shouldn’t regret it. The HSV striker scored the decisive 2:1 that meant the World Cup for Germany. “The goal was also so important for me because I knew then that things can continue internationally.” Also with the injury in mind: “Previously they said: The souler will never come back.” But he came back. And how.”