He is the entertainer of German football. But once Sepp Maier lost his fun. On July 14, 1979, the 1974 world champion was critically injured in a car accident. He also survived thanks to the help of his friend Uli Hoeneß. Now the goalkeeper legend is celebrating his 80th birthday.
“I like to think back to my time as a footballer. Back then – that’s always paradise.” Sepp Maier always knew that his life as a football star was a good one. Nevertheless, it was clear to him early on that there would be life after the time between the two posts: “Sepp Maier is coming back. With what? I don’t know yet. But I’ll think of something.”
And that’s how it happened. As a goalkeeping coach at FC Bayern Munich and the German national soccer team, Sepp Maier not only ensured well-trained goalkeepers, but also always provided humorous moments. And Sepp Maier was known for something else back then: the former Bundesliga keeper always had his film camera at the ready. The photos that Maier took at the 1990 World Cup have now become a real contemporary document.
But this video almost never existed. Sepp Maier wasn’t paying attention for just a moment – and the bag with the video camera and all the cassettes was stolen from the moving car. It was the day after the German national team won the World Cup in Italy in 1990. The football heroes were being driven through celebrating Frankfurt in convertibles when it happened. Sepp Maier cursed this damned moment – until after agonizing minutes, hours and days he finally managed to get the valuable contents of the bag back. In a shady bar near Frankfurt train station, Maier got the cassettes back for a payment of 1,000 marks. What a crazy story! But typical of the man who was born 80 years ago in Metten in the Deggendorf district of Lower Bavaria.
“And then I dreamed”…
During his active career, the FC Bayern Munich goalkeeper played 442 Bundesliga games without interruption in the box of the eventual record champions. That’s 13 complete seasons in a row for one and the same club. An incredible sporting achievement. And yet most football fans remember one thing in particular when they hear the name Sepp Maier: the fun entertainer and the Karl Valentin double on the green lawn. There are countless stories and anecdotes about the 1974 world champion. The then national goalkeeper Maier is said to have liked to tie the guests’ shoelaces under the table at receptions after international matches. In such a way that the fine ladies and gentlemen experienced their blue miracle when they got up.
His pranks were both legendary and feared among his colleagues. But Maier once spread the greatest terror completely innocently while he was sleeping (“A goalkeeper has to radiate calm, he just has to make sure that he doesn’t fall asleep”). It was the night before the triumph in the European Cup in 1967. Coach Tschik Cajkovski had got the team really excited before they went to bed. As he fell asleep, the Bayern goalkeeper thought hard about what could happen in tomorrow’s game against Glasgow Rangers.
Maier: “And then I dreamed: a cross flies into my 16, I jump up, the Scots just fly away to the right and left of me, and I grab the ball.” Sepp Maier remembers it exactly. He shows how he held his hands at night. Just like on the pitch when the ball stuck between his gloves. His dream went even further: “I have the ball, the fans are cheering, and I show them the ball, hold it up: ‘Look – I’ve got it’ … someone shouts: ‘Sepp, Sepp – want me “I wake up: I have Hans Rigotti’s head in my hands. I almost strangled him.”
Igloos, daffodils and a radio
Sepp Maier once wrote in a foreword to one of his books: “The audience’s biggest favorites are usually the goal scorers. They get really bullied once they’ve put an egg in the goalkeeper’s box. And who kisses me? “But to be honest, I’m really glad that it’s different with the keeper. Would you like to be hugged by a sweaty and mud-smeared player? Not me! I’m not a goalkeeper.”
But community was exactly Maier’s thing. His teammate Paul Breitner once said: “Sepp was the only one who cared about the little ones, the ones at the bottom, the nobodies, us young players. If Seppl hadn’t always cheered us up back then with his jokes, that would have been “The whole society was unbearable.” And as funny as he was, he was also very friendly with his teammates. At the 1970 World Cup in Mexico, he said to his competitor Horst Wolter from Braunschweig: “We can be friends if you forego being drafted.” The Eintracht keeper agreed: “We lived in one room and I wanted to be left alone.”
Maier was certainly one of the craziest players the Bundesliga has ever seen. In winter he built igloos on the square, and in spring he planted daffodils in his box with a small sign saying: “Please don’t bend!” His favorite hobby was magic, and so Sepp Maier always had all of his magician’s utensils ready to hand in his car trunk.
Sepp Maier was just a joker, as this story shows: On December 12, 1970, Bayern played at Hessen Kassel and stayed in the elegant “Hotel Reiss”. The attractive receptionist answered a call: “No, unfortunately we don’t…what?” She put the phone down excitedly. Then she called the doorman and the boys over: “Do you know what just happened?” she asked, still indignant. The porter and boys approached. The lady was indignant: “Then Sepp Maier called and complained that he didn’t have a radio. After all, we are a first hotel, he said. ‘Send me a radio,’ he demanded. And when I told him said we didn’t have a radio there…” The receptionist, who was angry seconds before, suddenly has to laugh out loud. “Then Sepp Maier said: ‘Then just send me someone to sing something to me!'”
“They had to call the fire department straight away.”
Sepp Maier’s sunny nature probably has something to do with his happy childhood. When little Maier and some comrades stole wood from a nearby sawmill to build a gate, his father caught him. But he couldn’t be really angry with the boys. He even lifted the boards over the garden fence for them in the last few meters. However, because a neighbor saw this and reported him to the police, the father lost his job.
In another story from his childhood, the culprit was never found: “The biggest stupid thing I did: As a six-year-old, I tipped over an entire truck full of light bulbs, right in front of the electrical store in Haar where my father worked. They had to take them straight away Call the fire brigade. This is what happened: The truck was standing at the garden fence and I saw a strange lever sticking out from under the loading area. So I just pushed it back and forth. Suddenly the loading area lifted and all the light bulbs flew into the garden. I I ran away immediately. In the evening my father came home and told the family about the incident. ‘It must have been some kind of rascal!’ my father scolded like a rascal. He never found out that I was the rascal. He still knows to this day “Nobody ever did it. I can only remember that at school I was always terrified when there was a knock on the classroom door. I thought for months: Look, the police are coming and arresting you.”
But the early, often frightening childhood memories never stopped Maier from continuing his practical jokes. In the spring of 1976, he once joked with a journalist before a European Cup game at Real Madrid. Because the national goalkeeper had forgotten his sunglasses, he bought a new one at the airport, put them on and didn’t take them off during the flight. In Madrid, a reporter excitedly asked him how long he had been wearing glasses; he hadn’t noticed anything about it yet. The joker Maier sensed his chance and told the journalist a first-class tall tale: “Yes, don’t you know that yet? A doctor prescribed the glasses for me. A few days ago I went to the ophthalmologist. He discovered that I have to wear glasses.”
The “blind” Bayern goalkeeper
But he couldn’t play with glasses, the reporter replied breathlessly. No, no, Sepp Maier reassured him, of course he would use detention trays. Unfortunately they wouldn’t come until Thursday. The journalist turned white as a sheet. Thursday? The game was already on Wednesday, he noted, looking deeply into the eyes of the Bayern keeper. Maier tried to reassure him: “It’ll be okay. Hopefully the Spaniards have bright floodlights. During training we’ll try out whether it works without glasses.”
The reporter immediately called the home office and sent this sensational exclusive story to his newspaper. Maier and his teammates stood in the background and grinned. A day later, a few hours before the game, the players finally opened the Munich tabloid and read with their eyes wet with laughter: “Blind goalkeeper in the Bayern goal. Sepp Maier’s detention bowls won’t be ready until Thursday.” By the way, the semi-final game in the European Champions Cup ended 1-1. Bayern won the second leg 2-0 and then brought the cup to Munich with a final win against St. Etienne.
With so much talent for humor away from the green grass, a question that Sepp Maier also asked himself was naturally obvious: “Could it be a promising career choice to become a comedian? Yes, I think that would suit me quite well. I have to do something similar the film people who made me film offers thought. What will my Agi say when she can admire me as a film actor on the screen? Only if she cooks me my favorite dish, roast pork with dumplings and salad, will she be a reward from film actor Sepp Maier get an autograph.” The film was ultimately called “When Ludwig goes into maneuver” and premiered on December 19, 1967. Afterwards, Sepp Maier was self-critical: “I’m a better actor in goal.”
Sepp Maier said he wants to be 100 years old. But he owes the fact that he can still express this wish to his friend Uli Hoeneß. Because on July 14, 1979, Maier barely survived a car accident. His life hung by a thread in the first hours after the accident. At first, the doctors only assumed there were a few broken ribs and bones – but when Uli Hoeneß stood at the Bayern keeper’s bedside the next lunchtime with a professor friend, they quickly realized that that couldn’t be everything. Without hesitation, they arranged for Sepp Maier to be transferred to another hospital. And there it was discovered that a tear in the diaphragm had caused the liver to push into the lung. Over two liters of blood had already collected in the abdominal cavity. The situation was life-threatening for the goalkeeper. A major operation lasting several hours was scheduled for the night. It wasn’t until weeks later that Sepp Maier was finally allowed to leave the hospital again.
A few days ago, Sepp Maier cheerfully told “Bild am Sonntag”: “I don’t have any spare parts in me yet, no glasses or an ear trumpet. I’m still supple. It’s not for nothing that they called me the ‘Cat of Anzing’.” The 1974 world champion is celebrating his 80th birthday this Wednesday. All the best and good luck, dear Sepp Maier!