FRANZ Beckenbauer, who left a unique imprint on German football as player, captain and coach, has died at the age of 78, the German Football Association (DFB) said on Monday (Jan 7).

“Franz Beckenbauer was definitely the biggest German footballer of all time, and above all one of the greatest men I have known,” said DFB vice-president Hans-Joachim Watzke. The association said Beckenbauer died on Sunday.

Tributes poured in for the football icon, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and former Germany team captain Lothar Matthaeus saying “we will miss him”.

Matthaeus was Germany’s captain and talisman when Beckenbauer coached the side to victory at the 1990 World Cup. “His death is a loss for football and for all of Germany. He was one of the greats as a player and a coach, but also off the pitch.

“Everyone who knew him knew what a great and generous person Franz was. A good friend has left us.”

Current Germany coach Julian Nagelsmann credited Beckenbauer for “changing the game” as a “libero”, or free central defender.

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“His friendship with the ball made him a free man. Franz Beckenbauer could float across the pitch. As a footballer and later as a coach he was sublime”.

Uefa hailed Beckenbauer as “one of European football’s greatest sons” who “shaped German football like no other”, while the English Premier League described him as the “most beautiful of footballers who won it all with grace and charm”.

In an Instagram post, Fifa president Gianni Infantino called Beckenbauer “a true legend”, saying “we’ll never forget you dear Franz, thanks for everything.”

On his 75th birthday, Beckenbauer told German tabloid Bild that he prayed regularly.

“They are prayers of thanks for the beautiful life I have been able to lead,” the frequent Bild columnist said.

A former captain of the German team in the 1970s, Beckenbauer had health problems in his later years and lived mostly withdrawn from the public eye in Salzburg, Austria, just across the border with Germany.

Known in football-mad Germany as “the Kaiser” – meaning “the Emperor” – Beckenbauer played a central role in some of the country’s greatest sporting achievements. His legacy, however, was later tarnished by his involvement in scandals surrounding Germany’s successful bid to host the 2006 World Cup.

Commanding figure

Born in Munich in 1945, Beckenbauer helped establish Bayern Munich as his country’s strongest club. He started at the club as a youth player in 1958, playing in the Bavarian capital until 1977.

“Bayern’s world is no longer what it used to be” Bayern wrote on Monday, saying “it is suddenly darker, calmer and poorer”.

Alongside Brazilian Mario Zagallo – who died aged 92 on Jan 5 – and France’s Didier Deschamps, Beckenbauer is one of only three men to have won the Fifa World Cup as both a player and a manager.

He captained West Germany to the 1974 World Cup title on home soil when they beat the Netherlands 2-1 in the final in Munich. He then managed the team that beat Argentina 1-0 in Rome to lift the trophy in Italy in 1990.

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. He later joining Hamburg and the 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”, or “the summer fairytale”.

However, the story turned sour in October 2015 when German magazine Spiegel broke a cash-for-votes scandal story.

The magazine alleged that, in 2000, DFB had bought the votes of four Asian members of Fifa’s 24-strong executive committee to secure the hosting of the 2006 World Cup finals. Beckenbauer had maintained his innocence.

Beckenbauer had heart surgery in 2016 and again in 2017, when worrying news about his ill health began to emerge.

At the beginning of January 2023, the football icon was absent from Pele’s funeral. A few months later, in August, he missed the traditional annual gathering of Germany’s 1990 world champions. On each occasion, his health was cited as a reason.

The last time he appeared at Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena was in August 2022, when he attended a match against Borussia Moenchengladbach.

Wolfgang Overath, who lifted the World Cup with Beckenbauer in 1974, said it was “unimaginable that (Beckenbauer) is no longer around.

“He towered over everyone... and yet he was so down to earth,” said Overath, recalling that Beckenbauer had phoned him just three months ago for his birthday “with all the strength he still had then”. AFP