The news of the death of Franz Beckenbauer (1945-2024) represents a turning point in the world of football. No other personality in this country had such an extreme influence on the past decades of this sport as the emperor. Several components contributed to Beckenbauer becoming a legend of the sport beyond its borders. On the one hand, his inimitably elegant playing style, which made him one of the best players of all time. On the other hand, also his later successes as a team boss, trainer and official. But what shouldn’t be forgotten: Above all, his charming, friendly manner, alongside his sporting successes, earned him huge sympathy around the world.
This factor shaped the young Beckenbauer into one of the most famous faces of the 1960s and 1970s, beyond what was then a fairly isolated football cosmos. The result was an almost limitless media presence. Robert Schwan (1921-2002), the legendary manager of FC Bayern, took Beckenbauer under his personal wing early on and marketed his protégé as the first German football player ever to be an omnipresent media figure.
As early as the mid-1960s, when FC Bayern Munich was just establishing itself in the Bundesliga after promotion in 1965, Beckenbauer was preparing to become known off the pitch. Among other things, the unforgettable song “Nobody can separate good friends” brought him great fame and even success in the German single charts. What many people don’t know: The song was actually only intended as the B-side of the single “You Alone”, which, however, did not come close to the success of today’s classic. Until the very end, “Nobody can separate good friends” was played regularly in the Allianz Arena and is sung as an anthem by Bayern fans around the world.
The second Beckenbauer single “Du bist das Glück” with the B-side “1:0 für die Liebe” a few months later was no longer successful and has now been forgotten. Beckenbauer once commented on his early forays into the world of pop stars in the magazine “Bravo” with his usual lightness: “I sang about two records. I don’t sing as badly as others think.”
In addition to music, the emperor also made several forays into the world of acting. He first appeared in a small role in 1971 in the comedy “Olympia-Olympia” alongside TV icons Beppo Brem (1906-1990), Heidi Brühl (1942-1991) and Joachim Fuchsberger (1927-2014). to see. In 1973, the semi-documentary film “Libero” was released, which showed a semi-fictional portrait of the footballer Franz Beckenbauer. Other smaller supporting roles followed, such as in the Italo slapstick film “The Superbull Chases the Godfather” from 1978. But a real screen, like a singing career, never materialized and was never something Beckenbauer wanted.
What is most familiar to many to this day are Beckenbauer’s excursions into the world of advertising. His advertisement for the food manufacturer Knorr with the legendary Beckenbauer saying “Power in the plate – Knorr on the table” is still a household word in many kitchens today. Even his puzzled “Yes, is it Christmas?” from a commercial for the mobile network operator E-Plus etched itself into the collective memory of Germans.
But it wasn’t just Beckenbauer himself who took advantage of his own popularity; artists also worked on him. Not only was he parodied numerous times (for example by Olli Dittrich in the TV satire “Schorsch Aigner – The Man Who Was Franz Beckenbauer”), but Beckenbauer portraits also became art objects. The multicolored lithograph by Andy Warhol (1928-1987), which the American made during Beckenbauer’s time at the New York Cosmos, is still legendary today.
However, one advertising engagement in particular also brought the emperor criticism. In the early 2010s, a deal was announced with Russia’s gas company RGO, of which the Russian state-owned company Gazprom is the most important member. As a sports ambassador, Beckenbauer should support major sporting projects in a “multi-year collaboration”. The Winter Olympics took place in Sochi in 2014, followed by the Football World Cup in 2018.
Connections with the awarding of the World Cup to Russia were consistently rejected. Beckenbauer always denied that the Gazprom deal had anything to do with the elections. According to Beckenbauer, who sat on the FIFA Executive Committee from 2007 to 2011, no contract had been signed with Gazprom before the vote. He was only approached for the first time afterwards, not in June 2010, as some media had reported, before the World Championships were awarded to Russia.
Throughout his life, Beckenbauer had an aura that many wanted to benefit from. Almost everyone wanted to bask in the light alongside Beckenbauer: the normal fan, athlete, filmmaker, music producer, entrepreneur – and ultimately also politicians and heads of state. For many years, things went well for Beckenbauer, who hardly ever received any real criticism. Until, due to the Gazprom deal and the inconsistencies in the awarding of the World Cup to Germany before 2006, which have not yet been fully clarified, its charisma began to cast shadows in the last ten years.
Nevertheless, Germany has lost an icon, a true global citizen and one of the most recognizable faces of this country. And what was special about Beckenbauer was that it wasn’t just his footballing skills that made him a superstar, but also his relaxed manner, his way of dealing with people and his credo in every phase of his life: to first treat everyone with respect and interest.
