by “For me,” Helmut Schön said of Franz Beckenbauer in February 1965 after calling up the West German team for the first time, “he is the player of the future. Maybe not in midfield, maybe up front.”
People always looked at Beckenbauer and saw someone from another age, and for a long time, no one knew what to make of him. He was handsome, energetic and languid, a player of effortless elegance guaranteed to anger those who believed that the game was about industry, sweat and grafting. He was technically gifted. He saw things that others did not. He had grace and intelligence.
Related: Franz Beckenbauer dies
From his teenage years it was clear that Beckenbauer would become a player of the highest level. But what job? No one could work it out. And so he effectively created a role for himself. Beckenbauer is now regarded as a great example of the libero, but he was not a libero in the Italian sense, sitting behind a tough man-marker and initiating attacks with long-range passes. As he himself said, if he was like anyone in the great Internazionale side of Helenio Herrera who popularized the idea of a libero by winning two European Cups with their catenacciothe left back was Giacinto Facchetti, a fine defender who would come forward to create angles in midfield and take part in the attack.
Beckenbauer’s early life was a story of a player looking for a role. When he made his Bayern debut in 1964 at the age of 18, in the promotion play-offs against St Pauli, he was operating on the left wing. In his next game, against Berlin Tasmania, he dropped back to playing at center half when Rainer Ohlhauser was brought on as Bayern chased an equalizer and did well enough to play again against Borussia Neunkirchen. In the second group game against St Pauli, he started as a fly-half, then dropped into defense to help deal with the threat of Guy Acolatse, and finished up front as Bayern chased a winner.
West German sides in those days used to adapt to the WM, where one of the halves would drop back behind the center half to play as a forward. Exhauster – literally, a cleaner – but he had no creative task as he would have done in Italy. Instead, the centre-half chose the center forward who was against him but had limited license to get forward, knowing there was cover behind him. Beckenbauer took that much further than anyone before.
Bayern failed to gain promotion by the end of that season, but cruised into the Bundesliga the following campaign with Beckenbauer as a regular center back despite persistent talk in the press that he might be better deployed as one of the most creative midfielders.
Bayern coach Zlatko Cajkovski appears to have had similar doubts and, that summer, signed rival Dieter Danzberg to act as a centre-half for him, allowing Beckenbauer to go further forward. But Danzberg was sent off in the opening game of the following season, a derby against 1860 Munich, and was banned for eight weeks. Beckenbauer entered his position and never left it, the glory of that first top-flight campaign coming against SV Meiderich in the 1966 German Cup final.
Beckenbauer’s early forays were curtailed by having to tackle centre-forward Rüdiger Mielke but, with eight minutes remaining and Bayern leading 3-2, Ohlhauser won the ball back and suddenly realized that Beckenbauer disappeared. He picked it out, Beckenbauer ran forward and scored the decisive goal from the edge of the box. His role as a libero was confirmed and, with Georg Schwarzenbeck as an essential but understated stopper alongside him, he would go on to underpin Bayern’s success in the 1970s.
For the national team, Beckenbauer’s role was more controversial. For that first game, in February 1965, an unofficial friendly against Chelsea, Beckenbauer operated in midfield with Schön experimenting with a back four. Apart from two games on the tour of South and Central America in 1968, when Willi Schulz was used as man-marker and Beckenbauer had to take his role in the back four, that is where he remained until 1971 when Schön agreed to allow give at last. Beckenbauer to play as the libero.
The following year, Beckenbauer was at the center of the West Germany side that beat England 3-1 at Wembley in the first leg of the Euro 72 quarter-final, a stunning half-hour. There was, said L’Équipe, “football from the year 2000”. This was, finally, the age of Beckenbauer.
The truth, however, was progress, however, West Germany was visible compared to the fading Alf Ramsey England, it was football in the early 70s. Trying to keep the game in the shadow of the main position against Léon during the 1970 World Cup, it was said that he taught West Germany how to manipulate possession, and Beckenbauer’s freedom to get out of the back line, which which offers extra money. man, essential to allow them to work like that. The style, a sort of Total Football without pressure, brought both the 1972 European Championship and the 1974 World Cup.
In the end time caught up with the man from the future. As a coach Beckenbauer was conservative. “A defensive position,” he said, “corresponds to the nature of Germany… we get stuck, we learn the opponent’s game and then we impose our game on him.”
When Klaus Augenthaler suggested a change to four backs, Beckenbauer insisted that libero plus markers was “our character, our system”. He brought two World Cup finals in 1986 and 1990, winning the second, but he probably delayed the arrival of the push, making the lost decade of the 90s (the odd outlier who won Euro 96 despite) and restart afterwards.
But why would Beckenbauer be a great theorist? Why would he, as a manager, join the tactical avant garde? As a player, because he was who he was, without having to conceptualize it, he changed the way the game was played. He emerged as a player out of time, and made football stick to him.
