Berti Vogts celebrates his 75th birthday today. He is one of the most successful players that Germany has ever seen. And he also won the European championship title in 1996 as the coach of the German national team. Yet despite all these triumphs, Vogts often stood in his own way in his life.
Berti Vogts himself always knew about the special difficulties others had with him: “When I run across water, my critics say: ‘He can’t even swim.'” A sentence that says so much about the man’s extraordinary life from the Lower Rhine says something like no other. Vogts has an admirable and fascinating career behind him and yet, with his special nature, he has often deprived himself of the wages he deserves for his work. Sentences like this – “My critics may all be right; I still believe that I have something right” – always ended up producing exactly the opposite of what the multiple Gladbach master player had actually hoped for from his original, subtle utterances. Because Berti Vogts always had the talent to attack.
So Cologne’s Bernd Cullmann was not at all impressed by Vogts’ tone at the 1978 World Cup in Argentina: “He believes that his screaming will turn him into a personality.” And Klaus Toppmöller never distinguished himself by the fact that he was an outspoken Berti fan: “If I had played football like Berti Vogts, as a pure calf bite, I would have burned my football boots at the age of 18.” And even a serious TV presenter like Erich Böhme could only do something with him to a limited extent: “I think Vogts is a must-have. If he only had one leg, he would keep walking.”
But Berti Vogts had a real fan from the start. Gladbach’s legendary coach Hennes Weisweiler loved his model student. And that was no coincidence. Because in the training camp, little Berti was always fully involved and, unlike his teammates, was the only one who did the exercises without sweat. Weisweiler praised him in the highest tones: “No wonder. It consists only of muscles. A prime example of what you can work out. When I think of how he told me three years ago when we just got into the Bundesliga, every morning asked tearfully: ‘Who do I have to play against next Saturday? Is he fast?’ And when I answered: ‘Yes, the Nafziger is fast’, then Vogts immediately asked for a new 100-meter run in order to improve from 11.9 to 11.8.
The literary outpouring of Berti Vogt
Vogts experienced his finest hour in the 1974 World Cup finals in Munich’s Olympic Stadium. After just seven minutes, his opponent Johan Cruyff asked him: “Play football, don’t always hit the bones.” And Vogts replied: “I’m sorry. I can’t hold you any other way!” Afterwards the world press was full of praise. “Tuttosport” said: “He turned off the water for Cruyff and all the tulips bowed their heads.” And the Swedish “Aftonbladet”: “Vogts’ living lawnmower did the impossible and threw Cruyff off balance.” The “Terrier” from Büttgen was most amazed at this success after the final: “I can’t hold up the ball three times, but I’m world champion.”
The World Cup in Germany was a stroke of luck for Berti Vogts anyway: “After the game between Germany and Poland at the 1974 World Cup, we sat at the airport. I was unresponsive and had pain in my groin. A nice blonde stewardess came: ‘Mr Vogts ‘Have a bite to eat.’ I replied very roughly: ‘I want to be quiet.’ And – ate a little anyway. We exchanged phone numbers. We met a few weeks later. It was a sensible meeting. ” This “sensible meeting” became a marriage.
After the 1990 World Cup, Berti Vogts succeeded Franz Beckenbauer. But at first the chemistry between the coach and the team wasn’t right at all. Thomas Berthold said: “Berti is too dogged. Even our goalkeeping coach Sepp Maier is no longer kidding.” A short time later, the whole of Germany laughed at a bizarre appearance by the national coach. Just in time for the 1993 Christmas season, Berti Vogts surprised the assembled crowd of journalists at a press conference with a very special literary outpouring Love and less hate, a little more truth, that would be something. “
“Please call me Berti McVogts”
Shortly after these lines were published, the first newspaper readers got in touch and said, astonished, that they had already heard this poem in their youth. And in fact, as “Der Spiegel” reported, Peter Rosegger (1843-1918) wrote very similar verses as early as 1891. In Rosegger’s version there was only “peace” instead of “joy” and there was no “yes” at the end. “Der Spiegel” wrote smugly: “Vogts is now protecting an educational gap. ‘I’m not that stupid and coping with foreign texts,’ he let the ‘Express’ know. He only recorded his’ own thoughts. I even knew Rosegger not’.”
Ben Redelings is a passionate “chronicler of football madness” and a supporter of the glorious VfL Bochum. The bestselling author and comedian lives in the Ruhr area and maintains his legendary treasure trove of anecdotes. for ntv.de he writes down the most exciting and funniest stories on Mondays and Saturdays. More information about Ben Redelings, his current dates and his book with the best columns (“Between Puff and Barcelona”) can be found on his website www.scudetto.de.
Unfortunately, the former world-class defender seems to have had the talent of not leaving a faux pas in the cradle. One story is more symptomatic than any other. Because it shows how Berti Vogts often maneuvered himself into impossible situations without any need. As the Scottish national coach (“Please call me Berti McVogts when we play against Germany”) his team competed against his former team, which he led to the European championship in 1996. Because of his supposedly not so well-developed knowledge of English, he did not want to show any nakedness in front of the German press and organized two separate dates: a PK for the Scots and one for the Germans.
When the German was over, the press representatives were asked to go into an adjoining room so that they wouldn’t hear Vogt’s speaking English. Manni Breuckmann was there at the time and reported later: “We came into a large hall – and what was there? A television set. And the press conference from the adjoining room was shown live on TV!”
Berti Vogts once said: “When Franz comes into a room, it’s light. When I come, I first have to look for the light switch.” That is one part of the truth of his life. Toni Schumacher once put the other part, which Vogts probably never really accepted, so aptly: “A player like Berti can still teach the individual player something new because he once had to learn it himself – in contrast to Franz. Today celebrates the 1974 world champion and his 75th birthday European champion in 1972 and 1996. Congratulations, all the best and good luck, dear Berti Vogts!