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Franz Beckenbauer, sports director, former German footballer and coach, considered one of the strongest defenders ever, has died: he was 78 years old. He announced it his family to the German Press Agency DPA.
Beckenbauer was born in Munich in 1945 and spent almost his entire career as a footballer and sports manager in Bayern Munich, the city’s football team and the strongest and most famous in German football. Beckenbauer played there from 1964 to 1977, winning among other things four championships and three European Cups in a row, from 1974 to 1976. He was one of the strongest players on that team. To date he is the only defender to have won the Ballon d’Or twice, the highest individual award for a footballer, in 1972 and 1976.
With the West Germany national team Beckenbauer was part of the team that won the World Cup played on home soil in 1974, beating the Netherlands in the final. Sixteen years later he was also the coach of West Germany who won the 1990 World Cup, played in Italy. In 2006 he was the president of the organizing committee of the first World Cup hosted by united Germany, the last ones won by the Italian national team: his lobbying activities to ensure that Germany had that edition of the World Cup were much criticized. In the final part of his career he was also president of Bayern Munich, from 1994 to 2009.
Beckenbauer was known for his extremely elegant style of play, very rare at the time for a defender, who until a few years ago mainly had the task of stopping opponents’ actions by any means permitted. Gianni Brera, one of the most talented Italian sports journalists ever, he wrote that Beckenbauer “moved in princely style.” Beckenbauer was later one of the most celebrated defenders who played in the role of “libero”which has now completely disappeared: it was essentially the defender who was responsible for initiating the action, and who was granted more creativity on the pitch.