RIP, ‘Der Kaiser’: Franz Beckenbauer dies at 78

Munich, January 8

Franz Beckenbauer, who won the World Cup both as player and coach and became one of Germany’s most beloved personalities with his easy-going charm, has died. He was 78.

“It is with deep sadness that we announce that my husband and our father, Franz Beckenbauer, passed away peacefully in his sleep yesterday, Sunday, surrounded by his family,” the family said in a statement. “We ask that we be allowed to grieve in peace and be spared any questions.”

The statement did not provide a cause of death. The former Bayern Munich great had struggled with health problems in recent years.

Beckenbauer was one of German football’s central figures. As a player, he reimagined the defender’s role in football and captained West Germany to the World Cup title in 1974 after they had lost to England in the 1966 final. He was the coach when West Germany won the tournament again in 1990, a symbolic moment for a country in the midst of reunification, months after the Berlin Wall fell.

Beckenbauer’s death comes just two days after the announcement that Mario Zagallo, the Brazilian who became the first person to win the World Cup as a player and coach, had died at the age of 92.

Beckenbauer was also instrumental in bringing the highly successful 2006 World Cup to Germany, though his legacy was later tainted by charges that he only succeeded in winning the hosting rights with the help of bribery. He denied the allegations.

The allegations damaged Beckenbauer’s standing in public perception for the first time. Until then, Beckenbauer had seemingly been unable to say or do anything wrong. Germans simply loved him.

“He did everything that a German is not supposed to do,” former Bayern Munich teammate Paul Breitner once said of the man popularly known as “Der Kaiser” (The Emperor). “He got divorced, he left his children, took off with his girlfriend, got into trouble with tax collectors. But he is forgiven for everything because he’s got a good heart,” Breitner said.

The son of a post official from the working-class Munich district of Giesing, Beckenbauer became one of the greatest players to grace the game in a career. Born on September 11, 1945, months after Germany’s surrender in World War II, Beckenbauer studied to become an insurance salesman but he signed his first professional contract with Bayern when he was 18.

Beckenbauer personalised the position of “libero,” the free-roaming nominal defender who often moved forward to threaten the opponent’s goal, a role now virtually disappeared from modern football and rarely seen before his days.

An elegant, cool player with vision, Beckenbauer defined as captain the Bayern Munich side that won three successive European Cup titles from 1974 to 1976. — AP