Who Was Franz Beckenbauer?

1. Munich: a boy who wanted to join 1860

Franz Anton Beckenbauer was born on 11 September 1945 in Munich, in the American occupation zone of Germany, four months after the end of the Second World War. His father was a postal worker, and the family lived in a working-class district of the city. As a boy, Beckenbauer supported TSV 1860 Munich, the city's other club, and he played for their youth team, but at the age of fourteen he was involved in a fight during a youth match with Bayern Munich, and he was told that he would have to choose. He chose Bayern, a decision that would shape the history of German football, and he joined Bayern's youth system in 1959.

Beckenbauer made his debut for Bayern's first team in 1964, when the club was still in the second division, and he helped them win promotion to the Bundesliga in 1965. He was a midfielder at first, a graceful, intelligent player who read the game better than anyone else on the pitch, and it was only gradually that he moved back into defence, into the position that would make him famous. Bayern's rise in the late 1960s and early 1970s, from a provincial club to the dominant force in German and European football, was built around Beckenbauer, and around the other great players of that generation, including Gerd Muller and Sepp Maier.

His nickname, Der Kaiser, the Emperor, was given to him in the late 1960s, and there are several stories about its origin. One says that it came from a photograph in which he posed next to a bust of the Austrian emperor Franz Joseph I, another that it came from his imperious style of play. Whatever its origin, the name stuck, and it captured something essential about him: he played football as if he owned the pitch, and he carried himself with a calm authority that set him apart from other players. He was not a shouter or a fighter; he was a leader by example, and by the quality of his play.

2. The libero: reinventing the sweeper

Beckenbauer's great tactical contribution was to reinvent the sweeper, or libero, the defender who played behind the rest of the defence and who was traditionally used to clear up loose balls. Beckenbauer turned the position into an attacking one: he would step out of defence with the ball, carry it into midfield, and start attacks, and he would also make runs into the opposition's half, arriving late in the penalty area to score. He was, in effect, a playmaker who started from defence, and no one had played the position like that before.

The libero role suited his gifts perfectly. He was not a physical defender, and he did not enjoy tackling, but he was fast, he read the game superbly, and he passed the ball with great precision. He could see the whole pitch from his position at the back, and he used that vision to direct his team's play, telling his teammates where to go and when to press. Coaches and players who watched him described him as a player who seemed to have more time than anyone else, and that sense of time, of calm in the midst of chaos, was his defining quality as a footballer.

The libero has largely disappeared from modern football, replaced by defenders who play in a flat back four and by midfielders who start attacks, but Beckenbauer's influence lives on in the modern ball-playing centre-back and in the idea that a defender can be a team's playmaker. Players such as Franco Baresi, who played the sweeper role for AC Milan and Italy, and, in a different way, the modern defenders who step into midfield, all owe something to Beckenbauer. He changed the way people thought about what a defender could be, and that is a rare achievement for any player.

3. Bayern Munich: three European Cups

Beckenbauer captained Bayern Munich to three consecutive European Cups, in 1974, 1975 and 1976, a feat that has been matched by only a handful of clubs in the history of the competition. The team, built around Beckenbauer, Muller and Maier, was the dominant force in European football in the mid-1970s, and it also won four Bundesliga titles and four German Cups during Beckenbauer's time at the club. He played 582 games for Bayern, scoring 74 goals, a remarkable total for a defender, and he was voted German Footballer of the Year four times.

The European Cup finals of those years are still remembered in Germany. In 1974, Bayern beat Atletico Madrid in a replay, after the first match had ended in a draw, and Beckenbauer's leadership was central to the victory. In 1975, they beat Leeds United in Paris, in a match that was marred by controversial refereeing decisions, and in 1976 they beat Saint-Etienne in Glasgow, with a goal from Franz Roth. The three victories made Bayern one of the great clubs of Europe, and they made Beckenbauer the most successful German club captain of his generation.

He also won the Ballon d'Or twice, in 1972 and 1976, an extraordinary achievement for a defender, since the award is usually won by forwards and midfielders. He was the first defender to win it, and he remains one of only a handful of defenders to have done so. The awards recognised not only his skill but also his influence on the game, and they confirmed his standing as the best player in Europe, and one of the best in the world.

4. West Germany: 1966, 1970 and the triumph of 1974

Beckenbauer played 103 times for West Germany, scoring 14 goals, and he was a central figure in three World Cups. In 1966, at the age of twenty, he played in the final against England at Wembley, a match West Germany lost 4-2 after extra time, and he was given the task of marking Bobby Charlton, the great English midfielder, a job he performed so well that it limited his own attacking play. In 1970, in Mexico, he played in the semi-final against Italy, known as the Game of the Century, in which he dislocated his shoulder but continued to play, with his arm in a sling, for the rest of the match. West Germany lost 4-3 after extra time, in one of the greatest matches ever played, and Beckenbauer's courage in playing on with a dislocated shoulder became one of the defining images of his career.

In 1972, Beckenbauer captained West Germany to victory in the European Championship, beating the Soviet Union 3-0 in the final in Brussels, and the team was widely regarded as the best in the world. Two years later, he captained the team to victory in the World Cup on home soil, beating the Netherlands 2-1 in the final in Munich. The Dutch team of Johan Cruyff, with its Total Football, was the favourite, and it took the lead in the first minute, but West Germany recovered, equalised through a penalty, and won with a goal from Gerd Muller. The victory was the high point of Beckenbauer's playing career, and it made him a national hero in West Germany.

His international career ended after the 1974 World Cup, although he continued to play club football for several more years, first with the New York Cosmos in the United States, where he played alongside Pele, and then with Hamburg, with whom he won the Bundesliga in 1982. He retired in 1983, at the age of thirty-seven, having won almost everything there was to win as a player, and having established himself as one of the greatest footballers of all time.

5. The manager: winning the World Cup again in 1990

Beckenbauer became the manager of West Germany in 1984, despite having no previous experience as a coach, and he led the team to the final of the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, where they lost to Argentina and Maradona. Four years later, in Italy, he led West Germany to victory, beating Argentina 1-0 in the final in Rome, and he became only the second man, after Mario Zagallo of Brazil, to win the World Cup as both a player and a manager. The victory was the culmination of a long career, and it confirmed his reputation as a footballer who understood the game from every angle, as a player and as a manager.

His management style was similar to his playing style: calm, confident and based on trust in his players. He did not shout, he did not impose complicated tactics, and he gave his players the freedom to express themselves. Some critics argued that his success as a manager was due more to the quality of his players than to his coaching, and there is some truth in that, but it is also true that managing a national team, with its pressures and its politics, is a difficult job, and that Beckenbauer did it with a grace and a success that few others have matched.

After the 1990 World Cup, Beckenbauer managed Marseille in France and Bayern Munich, with whom he won the Bundesliga in 1994 and the UEFA Cup in 1996, and he then moved into football administration, becoming the president of Bayern Munich and a member of the executive committee of FIFA. He was, by the end of the 1990s, one of the most powerful figures in world football, and he was widely respected for his knowledge of the game and for his calm authority.

6. The 2006 World Cup and the corruption allegations

Beckenbauer's most important role after his retirement was as the head of the organising committee for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, a tournament that is remembered as one of the best World Cups ever held, and as a moment of national celebration in Germany. The tournament was a success on and off the pitch, and Beckenbauer was widely praised for his leadership. But in 2015, the German magazine Der Spiegel alleged that the German bid for the 2006 World Cup had involved a payment of 6.7 million euros to FIFA, which it said had been used to buy votes, and Beckenbauer, as the head of the bid, was at the centre of the allegations.

Beckenbauer denied any wrongdoing, and he said that he had not been involved in any corrupt payments. FIFA's ethics committee investigated the matter, and in 2016 it opened formal proceedings against him, but it closed its inquiry in 2021 when the statute of limitations expired, without a finding against him. Swiss prosecutors also investigated the matter, and their criminal proceedings collapsed in 2020 for the same reason, before any verdict could be reached. The allegations have never been proved, and Beckenbauer always denied them, but they damaged his reputation, and they are a part of his story that cannot be ignored.

The episode is a reminder that the history of football administration in the early twenty-first century is a history of corruption and of reform, and that even the most respected figures were touched by it. Beckenbauer's defenders argue that he was a scapegoat, and that the payment in question was a loan, not a bribe, and that he was never shown to have benefited personally. His critics argue that, as the head of the bid, he must have known what was happening, and that the closure of the proceedings on a technicality is not the same as an acquittal. The truth is likely to remain uncertain, and the argument over his role in the 2006 bid will continue.

7. Death and the place he holds in football

Beckenbauer died on 7 January 2024, at the age of seventy-eight, in Salzburg, Austria, after a long illness. His death was marked by tributes from around the world, and by a memorial service at the Allianz Arena in Munich, attended by tens of thousands of fans. The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, described him as one of the greatest footballers of all time, and the tributes from players and coaches were unanimous: he was a player who had changed the game, and a man who had carried himself with dignity throughout his life.

His legacy as a player is secure. He is one of only a handful of players to have won the World Cup as a player and as a manager, he is one of the few defenders to have won the Ballon d'Or, and he is widely regarded as the greatest defender in the history of the game. His reinvention of the sweeper role changed the way football was played, and his leadership of Bayern Munich and West Germany made him the central figure in German football for more than two decades.

His legacy as an administrator is more complicated, and it will be debated for as long as the questions about the 2006 World Cup remain unanswered. But the two legacies are not separate: Beckenbauer was a man who understood football from the inside, as a player and as a manager, and who used that understanding to shape the game as an administrator. He was, in the end, a figure who belonged to football in a way that few others have, and his death marked the end of an era in German football, the era of the Kaiser.

Frequently asked questions

Sources and further reading

• Encyclopaedia Britannica — Franz Beckenbauer
• Wikipedia — Franz Beckenbauer
• FIFA — Franz Beckenbauer obituary
• German Football Association — DFB

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• Who Was Charlie Chaplin? — Charlie Chaplin created the Little Tramp, the most famous screen character of the silent era, and directed classics City Lights and The Great Dictator.
• Who Was Cleopatra? — Cleopatra VII was the last ruler of Ptolemaic Egypt, a multilingual stateswoman who kept her kingdom independent for 21 years before Rome annexed it.
• Who Was Diego Maradona? — Diego Maradona was an Argentine footballer who captained Argentina to the 1986 World Cup and is widely regarded as one of the greatest players in history.
• Who Was Don Bradman? — Don Bradman was an Australian cricketer who averaged 99.94 in Test cricket, a record so far ahead of any other batsman that it remains famous in sport.
• Who Was Elvis Presley? — Elvis Presley took gospel, country and rhythm and blues and turned them into rock and roll, becoming the most famous singer of his century.
• Who Was Emily Dickinson? — Emily Dickinson was an American poet who wrote nearly 1,800 poems in private in Amherst, Massachusetts, and was barely published in her lifetime.
• Who Was Faiz Ahmed Faiz? — Faiz Ahmed Faiz was Pakistan's most celebrated modern Urdu poet, whose verse joined romantic lyricism with resistance to injustice.
• Who Was Freddie Mercury? — Freddie Mercury was the lead singer of Queen, a four-octave voice and fearless showman who wrote Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions.
• Who Was Frida Kahlo? — Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for uncompromising, brilliantly coloured self-portraits exploring identity, the body and death.
• Who Was Galileo Galilei? — Galileo Galilei reshaped astronomy with his telescopic discoveries of 1610, defended a Sun-centred universe, and was tried by the Inquisition in 1633.
• Who Was Genghis Khan? — Genghis Khan united the Mongol tribes and built the largest contiguous land empire in history, a conqueror and lawgiver whose legacy is still argued over.
• Who Was George Washington? — George Washington won American independence, presided over the Constitutional Convention, and as first president defined the office — then walked away.
• Who Was Guglielmo Marconi? — Guglielmo Marconi was an Italian inventor who built the first practical wireless telegraph and sent the first transatlantic radio signal in 1901.
• Who Was Henry Ford? — Henry Ford was an American industrialist who founded the Ford Motor Company, built the Model T and perfected the moving assembly line.
• Who Was Isaac Newton? — Isaac Newton wrote the laws of motion and universal gravitation, invented calculus and transformed optics, leaving a lasting legacy in science.
• Who Was James Watt? — James Watt did not invent the steam engine, but his separate condenser of 1765 made it efficient enough to power the Industrial Revolution.
• Who Was Jane Austen? — Jane Austen published six novels in her lifetime, anonymously, and died at 41. This explains her life, her novels, her irony and her growing reputation.
• Who Was Jesus Christ? — Jesus of Nazareth is the central figure of Christianity, the world's largest religion. This explains his life in the Gospels, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Johan Cruyff? — Johan Cruyff was the star of Total Football, won three Ballon d'Or awards, and as a manager built the Barcelona team that shaped modern football.
• Who Was Johannes Gutenberg? — Johannes Gutenberg built the first mechanised printing press in Europe and printed the Gutenberg Bible around 1455, changing how the world shared ideas.
• Who Was John Keats? — John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at 25, having written his six great odes in a single year. This explains his short life, his poetry and his fame.
• Who Was Joseph Stalin? — Joseph Stalin led the Soviet Union from the 1920s until 1953, industrialised the country and led it through the Second World War, ruling through terror.
• Who Was Julius Caesar? — Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, crossed the Rubicon and remade Rome's calendar and government, and was murdered by senators who feared he would be king.
• Who Was Kobe Bryant? — Kobe Bryant won five NBA championships with the Los Angeles Lakers and became known for the Mamba Mentality, on and off the court.
• Who Was Leo Tolstoy? — Leo Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Anna Karenina, then abandoned literary fame for a radical moral philosophy that influenced Gandhi and the world.
• Who Was Leonardo da Vinci? — Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper and filled notebooks with anatomy and engineering, becoming the symbol of the Renaissance.
• Who Was Ludwig van Beethoven? — Ludwig van Beethoven wrote nine symphonies, 32 piano sonatas and the Missa Solemnis, much of it while deaf. This explains his life and legacy.
• Who Was Mahatma Gandhi? — Mahatma Gandhi led India to independence through nonviolent resistance, and his ideas shaped civil-rights movements worldwide.
• Who Was Mao Zedong? — Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China in 1949 and led it until 1976, bringing unification and the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
• Who Was Margaret Thatcher? — Margaret Thatcher was the first woman to serve as British prime minister, leading the UK from 1979 to 1990 through reform, the Falklands War and division.
• Who Was Marie Curie? — Marie Curie discovered polonium and radium and remains the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences, a pioneer of radioactivity research.
• Who Was Marilyn Monroe? — Marilyn Monroe was the biggest star of the 1950s, the blonde bombshell of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot, who fought the studio system.
• Who Was Mark Twain? — Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, wrote Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn and became America's most famous humorist.
• Who Was Maya Angelou? — Maya Angelou was a poet, memoirist and civil rights activist whose autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings made her widely read.
• Who Was Michael Jackson? — Michael Jackson, the King of Pop, made Thriller, the best-selling album in history, and changed music video, dance and pop stardom.
• Who Was Mirza Ghalib? — Mirza Ghalib (1797-1869) is the pre-eminent Urdu and Persian poet of the last Mughal era, whose ghazals on love, loss and doubt are still recited.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali Jinnah? — Muhammad Ali Jinnah was the barrister and statesman who led the All-India Muslim League and became Pakistan's first Governor-General in 1947.
• Who Was Muhammad Ali? — Muhammad Ali was the three-time heavyweight champion who called himself The Greatest, and the most famous athlete of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Napoleon Bonaparte? — Napoleon Bonaparte rose from Corsica to Emperor of the French, redrew the map of Europe, and left a legal code that still shapes law across the world.
• Who Was Nelson Mandela? — Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison under apartheid, then became South Africa's first democratically elected president and a Nobel Peace laureate.
• Who Was Nikola Tesla? — Nikola Tesla developed the alternating-current power system, the induction motor and the Tesla coil, making long-distance electric power practical.
• Who Was Osama bin Laden? — Osama bin Laden founded al-Qaeda in 1988 and organised the September 11, 2001 attacks, in which nearly 3,000 people were killed.
• Who Was Pablo Neruda? — Pablo Neruda was Chile's great poet, a Nobel laureate, a communist senator and a diplomat. This explains his poetry, his politics and his death.
• Who Was Pablo Picasso? — Pablo Picasso co-founded Cubism, painted Guernica, and spent 75 years breaking the rules of art — the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
• Who Was Pelé? — Pele is the only footballer to win three World Cups, the youngest winner, and the game's first global icon. This is his life, his goals and his legacy.
• Who Was Pope Francis? The People's Pope — Pope Francis, the first pope from the Americas and the first Jesuit pope, led the Catholic Church from 2013 to 2025 with an emphasis on mercy and the poor.
• Who Was Prophet Muhammad? — The Prophet Muhammad is the founder of Islam, the world's second-largest religion. This explains his life, his teachings and his legacy.
• Who Was Queen Elizabeth II? — Queen Elizabeth II reigned for 70 years, from 1952 to 2022 — the longest reign in British history. This explains her life, her reign and her legacy.
• Who Was Rabindranath Tagore? — Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature, and the author of the national anthems of India and Bangladesh.
• Who Was Rosa Parks? — Rosa Parks was not a tired seamstress who acted on impulse. She was a trained activist and NAACP secretary whose bus refusal was a deliberate act.
• Who Was Rosalind Franklin? — Rosalind Franklin's X-ray image, Photograph 51, gave Watson and Crick the key evidence for the double helix. This is her life and the credit debate.
• Who Was Rumi? — Rumi, the thirteenth-century Persian poet of Konya, wrote the Masnavi and the Divan-e Shams, and became the most widely read poet in the world.
• Who Was Shane Warne? — Shane Warne took 708 Test wickets, bowled the Ball of the Century in 1993 and won the 1999 World Cup with Australia. This explains his career.
• Who Was Stephen Hawking? — Stephen Hawking was a theoretical physicist who showed that black holes emit radiation and wrote A Brief History of Time. He died in 2018, aged 76.
• Who Was Steve Jobs? — Steve Jobs co-founded Apple in 1976, was forced out in 1985, built Pixar, and returned to launch the iMac, iPod, iPhone and iPad. He died in 2011, aged 56.
• Who Was Thomas Edison? — Thomas Edison held 1,093 US patents, invented the phonograph and the practical incandescent lamp, and built the first commercial electric power system.
• Who Was Vincent van Gogh? — Vincent van Gogh produced about 2,100 artworks in a single decade, including The Starry Night and Sunflowers, and became famous only after his death at 37.
• Who Was William Shakespeare? — William Shakespeare is the most performed playwright in history, yet almost nothing is reliably known about his private life.
• Who Was William Wordsworth? — William Wordsworth launched English Romanticism with Lyrical Ballads and wrote The Prelude, the great autobiographical poem. This explains his life.
• Who Was Winston Churchill? — Winston Churchill led Britain through the Second World War and won the Nobel Prize in Literature, and his record on empire is still debated.
• Who Was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart? — Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who composed more than 600 works before his death at 35, defining the Classical era.
• Why Van Gogh Became Famous After Death — Vincent van Gogh died in 1890 almost unknown, and within a few decades his paintings were among the most loved in the world.