60 years Bundesliga: The young Franz Beckenbauer showed the spectators in Hanover in the 1968/69 season a derogatory gesture that was not very gentlemanly – and got a fat penalty. At MSV the players joked with their coach and in Bremen they had to persuade a “Beatle” to have a great career on the pitch!
They have been there since 1965 – now FC Bayern Munich won its first Bundesliga championship. Bayern not only won the first five games of the 1968/69 season with ease, they were also at the top of the table for 34 consecutive days. A picture book season – if it hadn’t been for the “scandal of the year”. The game in Hanover got completely out of control. After the end of the game, Franz Beckenbauer stood in front of the fans of Hannover 96 in the Lower Saxony Stadium and showed his inner state of mind with a “Manneken Pis” movement “to the honored audience” (O-Ton Beckenbauer). The Bayern star felt wrongly booed.
The consequences were a 1,000-mark fine, 50-mark procedural costs, two letters of apology and an entry in the Frankfurter Zeppelin-Allee list of criminals. Sepp Maier also did something stupid that day: he slapped a Hannover 96 fan in the face. However, he went unpunished. In contrast to Gerd Müller, who was sent off after a harmless nudge. Bayern missed him for eight weeks, during which time they only scored three goals and scored 6-2 points.
“Do you want a car for your son?”
Surprisingly second was eight points behind champion Alemannia Aachen. The fans proudly intoned their club song: “We don’t need a seeler, we don’t need a roar – we buy all of our players in Marl-Hüls.” The Alemannia kickers from the far west formed a close unit, which was reinforced with the extrovert Belgian striker Roger Claessen. They had paid a lot for the star player in Aachen. Belgium’s Sportsman of the Year switched from Standard Liège to the “Potato Beetles” for 300,000 marks. However, Alemannia Aachen was never able to repeat the intoxicating success of this season. Already in the coming year you rose as a table bottom without a chance.
In Duisburg, MSV coach Robert Gebhardt, known as “Zapf”, caused amusement. On Mondays, the first thing he always did was let his players jump rope. The problem: The trainer could only see very, very badly – but was too vain to wear glasses. The players knew how to make excellent use of this handicap. Goalkeeper Manfred “Cassius” Manglitz had to grin when he remembered the Monday morning hours of yore: “The ropes were rolled up after the first few meters and only unpacked again at the finish line.” Since “Zapf” had built up a second mainstay selling children’s toys, he tried to buy the favor of his players. And so the question was “Do you want a car for your son?” a kind of running gag among the MSV kickers.
“The Pelé is cheap there”
The drama of this season happened with the reigning German champions. Actually, things didn’t go well at 1. FC Nürnberg from the start. Then coach Max Merkel lost track of things and complained about his kickers. He wanted to get rid of his Yugoslav international Cebinac on the spot: “If I imagine what it cost and how many goals Cebinac scores, the Pelé is really cheap.”
Nuremberg’s chairman Walter Luther suspected that it would be difficult for the club to stay up in the league at the latest on the eve of the clubbers’ game against Borussia Dortmund. Captain Luggi Müller came to Luther’s home and demanded a six-figure sum from the President. If this were not paid, the team would not be able to play with full commitment the following day. A victory, according to Müller, is of course not possible under these circumstances. “After this conversation, it was clear to me that most of the players were no longer at 1. FC Nürnberg with their hearts,” said the chairman, expecting the worst.
But the Lauterers caused the biggest excitement of the season. Before the away game against HSV, the team stopped at a hotel in Quickborn. All young men in the prime of rascals and a completely overwhelmed coach Egon Piechaczek. Players had fun throwing rosehips at the dining room from a gallery. Some fruits landed on the white tablecloths, others directly in the plunging necklines of the fine ladies. The hotel manager was outraged. Raising his index finger, he threatened: “One more time, then…”
But the announcement came too late. Midfield strategist Otto Geisert had thrown a bowl of flowers from the pedestal, which now – in the midst of the director’s words – shattered into a thousand pieces. A few minutes later, the 1. FC Kaiserslautern team was standing on the street with their suitcases packed. By the way, the game the next day ended 3:1 for HSV. The template for the interim 1:1 by Gerhard Kentsch was accurate as usual: Otto Geisert.
Second career as a football professional
- Ben Redelings is a best-selling author and comedian from the Ruhr area.
His current book “60 Years Bundesliga. The Anniversary Album” is a modern classic from the publishing house “The workshop”
He travels throughout Germany with his football programs. Info & dates www.scudetto.de.
At Werder Bremen they really wanted to sign 21-year-old Dieter Zembski, but the young man hesitated. A typesetter by trade for a Berlin publishing house, his great passion besides football was music – Zembski was the drummer in a band called “Mushroams” and had already made a major TV appearance on the legendary music show “Beat Club”. While club doctor Dr. Böhmert showed understanding for Zembski’s long hair (“The boy looks really good with his hairstyle”) and his hobby, coach Fritz Langner no longer understood the world: “With us he can earn money like never before, and he wants to continue strum. That’s not possible!”
Ultimately, Werder’s resourceful managing director Hans Wolff succeeded in hiring Zembski, but he also knew that this meant a hard turning point in the young man’s life: “As a typesetter and musician, he was already a journeyman – with us he is an apprentice again he has to put up with it.” And with something else. The hair had to come off too. Coach Fritz Langner knew no mercy for all his love: “The Beatles don’t play for me!” When the hair was finally trimmed, Zembski was finally allowed to play. And the successors of Fritz Langner, Fritz Rebell, the “handsome Hans” Tilkowski and the vain Robert “Zapf” Gebhardt, finally took a liking to Werder drummer Zembski.