German football mourns the death of the best player in its history. Franz Beckenbauer, the Kaiser who commanded the world champion 'Mannschaft' in 1974, died this Monday at the age of 78, after spending recent times battling a series of illnesses that had separated him from public life and converted him his day to day life in true torment.
Born on January 7, 1945 in a city of Munich devastated by the Second World War, Beckenbauer took the now maligned figure of the libero to another dimension, a position that has him as its greatest reference and that cannot be understood without the mark left by this great footballer who led the best Bayern Munich of all time and who also created some of the most glorious pages of the German team.
In addition to the 1974 World Cup that he won as captain of the Federal Republic of Germany, he also won the World Cup as coach of the already unified Germany in 1990. His extraordinary record of achievements as a footballer also includes the Euro Cup that he won in 1972, as well as the three European Cups that he won consecutively with Bayern Munich between 1974 and 1977.
Elegance personified
He was elegance personified on the field of play and a consummate winner who amazed with his leadership capacity, to the point of becoming one of the most admired players of his time and one of the most acclaimed of all time. In addition to the enormous collective successes that he achieved with his national team and with Bayern, he won two Ballon d'Ors, in 1972 and 1976, which recognized his unique contribution to a sport that he enhanced with art and voracity of him.
He hung up his boots in 1983, after a penultimate stage at the New York Cosmos, that team that also witnessed the final blows of other legends of the caliber of Pelé, to begin from that moment on a fruitful career in the offices of Bayern of Munich, a club of which he was president until Uli Hoeness succeeded him in the position in 2009.
But his last years were marked by a series of painful health problems that reduced his quality of life and kept him away from the playing fields where he had been happy. He suffered a myocardial infarction, underwent heart surgery and Parkinson's disease took its toll on his health, causing him to be struck with singular severity by dementia. He had lost vision in his right eye and doctors advised him to avoid long trips due to his heart problems, which prevented him from attending the funeral of his friend Pelé in December 2022, with whom he shared twilight times as a footballer for Cosmos. after creating the legend of Bayern Munich along with other stars of the stature of Torpedo Müller and Sepp Maier. What the Bavarian team is today cannot be understood without its enormous footprint.
Beckenbauer played a total of 427 games (60 goals) with Bayern Munich, a club where he spent thirteen seasons until, already in the final stretch of his career, he moved to the United States to sign for the New York Cosmos and officiate as one of the great claims to popularize soccer in the United States. He played 80 games and scored 17 goals with the Big Apple team, before returning to the Bundesliga with Hamburg and having an outstanding participation in the last Bundesliga that said club from northern Germany raised.
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