Today Horst Hrubesch celebrates his 70th birthday. The three-time German champion, European cup winner and European champion from 1980 has inspired many people in his career. But one thing Hrubesch had to fight for almost a lifetime!
“This coach was like a friend, he snapped at us and immediately pulled us out of the mud. I’ve never seen it like this before.” Manuel Neuer raved about his coach Horst Hrubesch after the successful weeks in Sweden in 2009 and winning the European Championship with the U21s. With his praise, the German national goalkeeper is of course by far not the only one. But surprisingly there is someone who doubted Hrubesch for a very long time. Who that is? More on that later.
Bayern Munich’s former keeper Sepp Maier is definitely not. Because he once said in awe of the outstanding skills of the striker, who was born in Hamm: “The Hrubesch will be the first player in the Bundesliga to manage a free kick from 30 meters with his head.” And his former teammate at Rot-Weiss Essen, the legendary Manfred Burgsmüller, wasn’t either – because he once said: “The Hrubesch couldn’t run straight ahead, but he hit flanks with his head from twenty meters”.
“The long monster”
For a long time nobody would have thought that the trained roofer would ever make it as far as a professional footballer. After trial sessions at BVB in Dortmund and VfL in Bochum, “Hotte” was sent away as unsuitable. But Rot-Weiss Essen finally took it – and should never regret it.
Because after his move to RWE in the 1975/76 season, “the long monster”, as he was called at the time, scored two goals in his very first Bundesliga game. Back then against Bayer Uerdingen there was an offside goal, a pate header and many other great opportunities. After the encounter, Hrubesch said modestly: “It is enough for me if I can be found in the first dozen of the goal scorers. After all, I’ve only just skipped four classes. I just hope that I don’t wake up suddenly from this beautiful dream!” But there was no question of that. From now on it worked for him.
A curious example from this time shows how quickly the recognition in the league was really fast. Because when his striker Dieter Müller went through a small period of weakness, Cologne’s legendary trainer Hennes Weisweiler politely asked a journalist to write that he had been seen in the stands in Essen. The journalist looked irritated at Weisweiler at the strange proposal. But the Cologne coach just smiled mischievously and explained: “When Dieter Müller reads this, he thinks of Horst Hrubesch and runs a few steps faster again!” The striker from Essen could not have received greater praise after just a few months in the Bundesliga.
The football officials across the country had become aware of Horst Hrubesch – but then it went down with Rot-Weiss in the second division and the Essener slipped out of the public eye for a short time. Not for long, however, because Hrubesch set a fabulous record in the 1977/78 season: he scored 42 goals in just one season. Hamburg’s new manager Günter Netzer pulled out all the stops to sign Hrubesch for HSV. And it worked. And how!
Because the time at Hamburger SV was marked by success. A great group won title after title. They understood each other on and off the square. Otto Rehhagel, who would have loved to sign the striker himself for BVB, called the HSV players Hrubesch and Jürgen Milewski (1.71 m) “A couple like Pit and Klärchen”. The two took the size gap with humor. Whenever Milewski ate his favorite dish of potato pancakes with applesauce, Hrubesch just shook his head and said: “Jürgen, you’d better punch a couple of steaks in your stomach, then you might still grow. You’re almost a midget.” Of course, Milewski did not allow himself to be said without contradiction and countered: “Longer, if I still grow, you might be rid of your post – and I don’t want that!”
Hrubesch will never forget a championship celebration with HSV in his life. In 1982 the English double-decker bus that people wanted to take through the city proved to be decrepit. He just didn’t want to start. When he finally drove, the first hill threw him off the track. The team thought: nothing helps, so, all HSV professionals out, push the vehicle. But after a few meters it was clear that nothing was going on here. A tractor chugged to help and pulled the bus through the streets.
And when the traffic lights suddenly hung too low and a concerned police officer warned the professionals, Horst Hrubesch only said: “Don’t worry, I’ll head them all off!” In the end, it didn’t bother me anymore that some jackets had to be sacrificed by punks after an egg throw. Hrubesch also got one of the eggs right in front of his forehead. His teammates grinned: “Man, Horst, now it’s good too. You don’t have to take everything with your head.”
The goalscorer also has fond memories of the national team. In 1980 he won the European championship title with the team in Italy. But one thing was almost more important to Hrubesch. Before the final in Rome, he was accompanied to go into the city. He had previously obtained permission for this trip from his trainer Jupp Derwall. He was allowed to leave the team hotel for exactly one hour. Derwall later remembered that day very well: “Although I wasn’t sure that this would make any sense, I was already there after half an hour to wait for the player. Then he came, punctually and easily. with a smile that made me curious. Already from a distance he shouted: “Coach, I saw him! I saw him, the Pope, Coach! The Pope, really, very close up, I saw him.” Horst looked happy, satisfied and full of gratitude. “
“If the national coach had come just seconds later …”
After he ended his playing career in 1986 in the service of Borussia Dortmund, Hrubesch moved to the sidelines. But after a few initial successes, the former star striker’s career suddenly got stuck. “Kicker” editor Rainer Holzschuh once recalled that it took a coincidence for Hrubesch to end up at the DFB.
Ben Redelings is a passionate “chronicler of football madness” (Manni Breuckmann) and a supporter of the glorious VfL Bochum. The author, filmmaker and comedian lives in the Ruhr area and tends to his treasure trove of anecdotes. For ntv.de he writes down the most exciting and funniest stories on Tuesdays and Saturdays. More information about Ben Redelings, his current dates and projects can be found on his website www.scudetto.de.
In 1998 Holzschuh and Hrubesch were sitting in a taxi ready to leave when the door was thrown open at the last second and Berti Vogts dived over to the two of them. The “Kicker” editor is certain: “If the national coach at the time had come just seconds later, Horst’s life would have taken a different path.” But so Vogts asked about Hrubesch’s condition and he took the initiative and asked the national coach for a way out of his time-out. Vogts encouraged him in the taxi back then and a short time later Hrubesch was an employee of the DFB.
At first, however, with media headwinds. Team boss Erich Ribbeck finally found clear words when the criticism of his assistant got louder and louder: “It is not important to me whether someone is a trained roofer or house painter. What is important is whether he can deal with players.” And he finally proved that he could do that, not least in 2009, when he led the U-21s to the European championship.
At that time, Hrubesch implemented his idea of football with a lot of patience and commitment. He wanted to see fast football. Looking back, the European champions do not remember a single unit in which Hrubesch did not shout out loud “patsch, patsch, patsch” across the square. The exclamation should encourage the players to let the ball run with few contacts.
“Now I believe myself that I’m really that good”
And if things didn’t go so well during training, Hrubesch would go into the penalty area himself, just like he used to. After the strikers complained that the outside hit the flanks too imprecisely, the ex-striker stood at the six-yard line and netting 9 out of 10 balls without further ado. Afterwards he went to his strikers and said with a relaxed smile: “I don’t even know what you’ve got. The flanks are okay!”
When Horst Hrubesch received the “Walther Bensemann Prize” of the “German Academy for Football Culture” two and a half years ago in Nuremberg, which had been awarded to personalities such as Alfredo di Stefano, Cesar Luis Menotti and Alex Ferguson, the man who held the Praise so many football fans for his work as a player and coach and as a person, pause for a moment. And then Horst Hrubesch said something really astonishing: “If you win such an award, you have to have done a lot right. In my life I have always tried to put myself under a bushel. I have often asked myself: Are you really that good, can you do it or you can’t? But I think, and now I am slowly believing it myself, that I am really that good! ” And of course Horst Hrubesch is right about that.
Today the man who is still involved in football as a junior director at the Hamburger SV youth performance center is celebrating his 70th birthday. All the best and luck to you, dear Horst Hrubesch!
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