Goodbye to Franz Beckenbauer: The legendary German footballer died yesterday, as his family informed the German agency Dpa today. Franz Beckenbauer passed away on Sunday 7 January 2024 at the age of 78. His family announced it today. The former German defender he was the first to become world champion both as a player (in 1974) and as a coach (in 1990, on the bench of his Germany). While at Bayern Munich he won, among other things, three consecutive European Cups between 1974 and 1976.
The carreer
World champion as a player (1974) then as a coach (1990), president of Bayern and organizer of the 2006 World Cup (the one won by Lippi’s Italy): for more than half a century Franz Beckenbauer has marked the daily life of Germans who are passionate about football and beyond, becoming the “Kaiser” from the thousand facets of post-war Germany. It’s a story that Franz Beckenbauer loved to tell, an anecdote that influenced his future choices. At the age of 12, the boy from the working-class neighborhood of Obergiesing, in the south of the Bavarian capital, discovered football at SC 1906 Munich.
The link with Bayern Munich
Then the beginning of a very long history between Bayern and the young Franz, who in a few years would become the “Kaiser”. Born in September 1945 in the ruins of post-war Germany, son of a post office manager, Franz Beckenbauer arrived at Bayern in 1964, when he was not yet 19, and spent most of his career there as a libero behind the defence. His is an exceptional palmares: four league titles and as many German Cupstwo Ballon d’Ors (in 1972 and 1976, becoming the first defender to be awarded the coveted award twice), three consecutive successes in the European Cup, the forerunner of the Champions League.
The triumphs as a player and as coach
With the German national team he won the double European Championship (1972) and World Cup (1974). The icing on the cake is represented by the fact that the world coronation takes place at home, in the Olympic stadium in Munich, a stone’s throw from his hometown. After his first experience in the New York Cosmos, with Pele’, from ’80 to ’82 he played for Hamburg, where he won another championship before ending his career again with the NY Cosmos. At Italia ’90 winning in the final at the Olimpico against Argentina of Maradona in Rome Beckenbauer becomes even more legendary, becoming the second world champion both as a player and as a coach, after the Brazilian Mario Zagallo.