Normally, Ottmar Hitzfeld shouldn’t have a mouth anymore – this extremely successful football coach bit his lips, his tongue, his teeth so often. And although he had so many well-formed things to say on the way to the Champions League victories with Borussia Dortmund (1997) and Bayern Munich (2001), on the way to five championships with Bayern, two with Dortmund, he had to swallow so much have to talk about what he preferred not to say. It’s a bit of a miracle that the man can celebrate his 75th birthday on January 12th. Healed from stomach ulcers, recovered from full-blown burnout syndrome.
“I’m doing very well so far,” says Hitzfeld. “It’s just my mentality that I don’t want to freak out. These are demands on myself. Even if it would be healthier to scream out the pressure.” And again: “Yes, I’m fine. I do sports, gymnastics, strengthening exercises.”
Hitzfeld celebrated at home in Lörrach on the Swiss border with his two remaining siblings (he was the youngest of five) in a small family circle. But the crowd of well-wishers is unmanageably long.
For a while, the trench coat was something like Ottmar Hitzfeld’s trademark
Source: dpa/Rolf Haid
“One of the best coaches that has ever existed in Germany. He is also a person of impeccable character. I’m glad I know him,” says the great Günter Netzer (79). “It is sometimes very difficult for such a sensitive coach when the situation affects him more than is actually allowed. That’s what characterizes Ottmar Hitzfeld as a person: he doesn’t let it get to him so much that he sometimes thinks too much about it.”
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“Hello, Ottmar,” says Jupp Heynckes (78) with a deep bow. “An understanding player, a gentleman on the sidelines. Always controlled, never extravagant, never abusive, never polemical. Always with style, with grandeur. He knows what a player needs to develop. He knew how to deal with big, not always easy-care players like Stefan Effenberg, Matthias Sammer, Julio Cesar and Oliver Kahn, so that they didn’t just play for themselves, but for the coach. Just swallow a toad and press your lips together. An absolute top coach in football history.”
A ban on speech with consequences
Hitzfeld achieved the greatest feat of teeth-clenching diplomacy on March 6, 2001, after the angry speech in Lyon. When then-Bayern President Franz Beckenbauer accused the players of “old-school football,” he advised them to look for other careers. Things are brewing in the team. Hitzfeld heard the players whispering that the emperor up there had already scored a number of own goals in his career. He feared a revolt. “Everything can explode now,” he thought to himself. “You can’t win the fight with an uprising.”
A little later, Hitzfeld stood in the hotel elevator with Stefan Effenberg and Mehmet Scholl, among others, and spoke to them: “You can’t do anything about these statements. You have to endure it and can only respond with performance.” Hitzfeld says that at that moment he imposed a ban on speaking for the first time. With serious consequences. Bayern never lost a game and became German champions and Champions League winners on penalties against FC Valencia.
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The situation was also tense six years later (manager Uli Hoeneß had brought Hitzfeld, coach from 1998 to 2004, back in an emergency) after a 2-2 draw in the UEFA Cup against Bolton Wanderers. “Football is not mathematics,” said Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, attacking Hitzfeld, a math teacher. He did not extend his contract and was succeeded by Jürgen Klinsmann. Both sides have long seen the situation as relaxed.
“I wouldn’t say a sentence like that to any coach in public today. I apologized to Ottmar Hitzfeld at the time. Fundamentally and regardless of coaches and players, football is and remains unpredictable. I still stand by that,” says Rummenigge today. And in the same breath, he particularly appreciates Hitzfeld’s empathy: “He is one of the most important coaches in the history of FC Bayern. He gained the most respect from me in 1999 after the cruel loss of the Champions League final against Manchester United.
Despite this unbelievable defeat, he still had the strength and the necessary calm to influence the players and encourage them. He was just as disappointed as we were, but he showed it the least. This style and his empathy helped us win the title against Valencia two years later. What you need most in such situations is empathy.”
Pastor Hitzfeld
Former left winger Wiggerl Kögl, now an advisor to Thomas Müller, even says: “Ottmar should have stayed as Bayern coach for ten years. Because he can lead stars perfectly.”
Although it started with fear and terror. The former goalscorer Hitzfeld (including VfB Stuttgart) was shocked by his first coaching position at SC Zug, where President Werner Hofstetter was at his throat in 1984 and accused him of speaking like a priest. Hitzfeld already protected the players back then – and was promoted to the first Swiss league. Yes, Pastor Hitzfeld.
The pastoral in him kept breaking through. Like in 2014, when he and Netzer visited tax evader Uli Hoeneß in prison. “It wasn’t a coffee party,” reports Netzer. “Uli was enormously impressed. He was very touched.” It was Hoeneß who relieved Hitzfeld of his coaching position in 2014 after six years at FC Bayern.
The FC Bayern players celebrate their coach Ottmar Hitzfeld in 2001. The coach jubilantly shows the Champions League trophy
Source: dpa/Anja Niedringhaus
“Yes, it was like a release, like a liberation. I no longer had the strength to finish myself,” says Hitzfeld and reports on his burnout: “It was very hard when you no longer have any strength and would like to hide under the covers in the morning, but immediately appeal to the team again must.”
Even I, the author of this article, felt the pastoral quality of Hitzfeld. When he put the great talent Owen Hargreaves, outstanding in the Champions League final against Valencia, on the bench months later, I wrote the Canadian a text message: “It’s a shame that Ottmar isn’t picking you up.” Embarrassingly, the message ended up with Hitzfeld, because I mixed up the last digit of their numbers. Hitzfeld had the “3”, Hargreaves the “4”. When I realized the mistake, I feared Hitzfeld’s revenge. But he responded kindly: “I know how hurt and angry players are when they sit on the bench. And it’s the journalist’s right to investigate.” Phew.
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To this day, Hitzfeld is friends with Pastor Josef Hochstrasser, a church critic and football fan from Lucerne. During a visit to Munich, he saw how the cat was run over by Hitzfeld and how it affected him. Hochstrasser held a ceremonial funeral for his friend.
How does the gentleman, the grandpa of three, who is even kinder and wiser at 75, observe the Bavarians of today? “There has been a lot of unrest in the last few years, a lot of things have been upended, so one wheel has to fit into the other,” says Hitzfeld. And about your current colleague? “Thomas Tuchel has had a lot of success in his positions. “He got the team under control,” he says. “But he has to get to know everything first. Feel your way into it. Bavaria is a very sensitive entity. They reacted well with the transfer of Harry Kane. Not just because they needed a different type of player up front. Harry Kane has stabilized the team, has a positive charisma and inspires his teammates. Stay calm, even if they don’t hint at him. A good type of leader.”
A Kane who stays calm in stressful situations – that’s where Hitzfeld probably recognizes a piece of himself. Congratulations, Ottmar.
The text was written for the Sports Competence Center (WELT, SPORT BILD, BILD) and first published in SPORT BILD.
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