Heidi Beckenbauer moves at opening match
EM 2024 starts with tears for the Kaiser
Beckenbauer’s widow Heidi blows a kiss on the hand to her Franz.
© getty/Alexander Hassenstein
Heidi Beckenbauer walks onto the pitch at the opening ceremony of the 2024 European Championship and remembers the late “Kaiser”.
What a moving start to the European Championship: The wife of the football star who died in January 2024 At the start of this year’s European Football Championship, Franz Beckenbauer sends a kiss to the sky. The images touch the hearts of more than just football fans.
Heidi Beckenbauer, 57, brings the eight-kilogram European Championship trophy to the sacred turf of the Munich stadium at 8:52 p.m. before the start of the first game of the 2024 European Championship between Germany and Scotland. When the face of Franz Beckenbauer (1945 to 2024) appears on the giant scoreboard in memory of the legendary footballer and coach, tears well up in her eyes and those of millions of spectators.
The raging stadium crowd suddenly close to tears
As she takes her difficult steps onto the football field, which meant her entire life to her late “Kaiser”, Bernard Dietz, captain of the 1980 European champions, places his hand compassionately on her back. Jürgen Klinsmann, who helped Germany win the European Championship in 1996, completes the trio at the opening ceremony. Franz Beckenbauer was captain of the DFB team when it won its first European Championship in 1972.
Before Heidi Beckenbauer leaves the football field to make way for the German national team in the game against the Scots, which they later won, she sends her husband a kiss into the sky with her right hand.
Franz Beckenbauer died at the beginning of the year at the age of 78. He underwent six bypasses during a heart operation in 2016. In 2019, an eye attack left him almost blind. He is also said to have suffered from Parkinson’s disease. He met Heidrun “Heidi” Burmester in the late 1990s. At the time, she was secretary of FC Bayern. He leaves behind four children – his fifth child, son Stephan, died in 2015. Beckenbauer became world champion in 1974 as a player and in 1990 as coach of the national team.