GDR legend does not want to give up
Joachim Streich fights against the great enemy
03/24/2022, 4:10 p.m
Joachim Streich is one of the great footballers in German history. In the GDR he rises to become the record scorer. Because there is no comparison, he is called the “Gerd Müller of the East”. Now the 70-year-old is struggling with a serious illness and doesn’t want to give up.
Joachim Streich “could handle every situation”. That’s what the former GDR selection coach Georg Buschner once said appreciatively about his record goalscorer. The 70-year-old is now struggling with a serious illness. But even during this time he tries to make the best of everything.
Myelodysplastic syndrome – a disease of the bone marrow that can progress to leukemia. He had been diagnosed for a long time, Streich confirmed to the “Bild” newspaper. But he tries “to deal with it positively. Apart from the fact that I often feel weak, I manage quite well”.
So far, Streich’s blood has been renewed through transfusions in Magdeburg. There, where the “Gerd Müller of the East” was celebrated in the 1970s and 1980s at 1. FC Magdeburg. After an examination at the Leipzig University Hospital, a doctor advised him to have a stem cell transplant.
Then, however, the setback: “Everything was prepared, I was already on the ward,” reported Streich: “But then pneumonia intervened. I had to be released. Those were very bad days for me,” said Streich, who is now apparently on waiting for a new date.
229 Oberliga goals
However, the former world-class goalscorer “immediately felt in good hands” with his medical team. Perhaps also because he immediately found a common topic with the director of hematology: “We talked a lot about football,” said Streich: “And he told me that he used to be a fan in the stands when I was still active .”
Back when Streich set records for eternity. 55 goals in 102 games for the selection of the former GDR, a total of 229 goals for Magdeburg and Hansa Rostock in the Oberliga. He was cup winner three times, footballer of the year twice and won the top scorer four times. Streich also won Olympic bronze with the GDR in 1972, and he missed the Olympic victory in Montreal in 1976 due to a broken collarbone.
In the current situation, his “closest circle of family and friends” catch him, said Streich, who was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the German Football Museum in Dortmund in November. But he is also grateful to the stem cell donor, who is completely unknown to him: “I know that I will never find out who he is. But I take my hat off to him. Thank you!”