The start of 2024 has left football a little more orphaned. On the 5th, Lobo Zagallo died and this Monday Franz Beckenbauer died, at the age of 78. The Brazilian and the German are, along with Didier Deschamps, the only ones who have been able to win the World Cup as footballers and as coaches.
The death of Beckenbauer, born in Munich in 1945 and suffering from health problems for some years, has been confirmed by his family to the Dpa agency without specifying the cause: “It is with great sadness that we inform that our husband and our father, Franz Beckenbauer, passed away yesterday Sunday peacefully in his sleep, surrounded by his family.”
During his splendor on the pitch, Beckenbauer, nicknamed the ‘Kaiser’, was one of the pillars of the Bayern Munich team that would take the throne from Cruyff’s Ajax Amsterdam and win three consecutive European Cups. Although his rivalry with the Dutch genius would reach its zenith in the 1974 World Cup final, with the final victory of the Germans in an indelible match played at the Olympic stadium in Munich. Two years earlier, Beckenbauer’s Germany had won the European Championship, beating the Soviet Union in the final.
As a footballer, Beckenbauer personified German dominance in world football during the 1970s and became a defender ahead of his time, alternating the positions of center back and midfielder, as years later his compatriots Matthaus, among others, would emulate him. and Sammer.
During those years, the German mastermind would become the first defender in history to be awarded the Ballon d’Or, a milestone he achieved in 1972 and which he would repeat in 1976, the year in which he won his third consecutive European Cup with Bayern. his hometown team.
As a coach, he won a League and a UEFA Cup with Bayern but it would be the German team that would bring him his greatest successes and would definitively make him a legend. At the World Cup in Italy in 1990, Beckenbauer would go down in history by becoming champion also as a coach, after beating Maradona’s Argentina in the final.
