Many who remember Sepp Maier (80) as the “Cat of Anzing” are already older. “Maier Sepp” was once a nationwide legend who was known to almost every child in Germany on and off the field – and certainly to those who guarded the goals on the football fields. In recent years things have become quieter around the now 80-year-old, and the greatest German goalkeeper of all time has recently been heard more frequently in public in connection with sad news, such as the losses of his companions Gerd Müller (1945-2021) and Franz Beckenbauer (1945 -2024). Time to remember why Sepp Maier will one day have a statue erected in front of the Munich stadium.
When Josef Dieter Maier was born in Metten, Bavaria, a year before the end of the Second World War, on February 28, 1944, hardly anyone in Germany could have thought about his great football career. And even after his parents moved to nearby Haar after the end of the war, where Sepp Maier trained as a machine fitter from 1958, a future as a goalkeeping legend was not yet in sight. Although he played for TSV Haar, Sepp Maier played as a center forward until the B youth team. Back then, he only occasionally stood in goal during training, “for fun,” as he later stated.
But it happened as it had to happen. The regular goalkeeper of TSV Haar was injured and Maier was ordered between the posts in a cup game against FC Bayern’s second youth team. “Against my will,” as Maier later says. “We lost 9-1, but despite this defeat, I was invited to the game between Upper Bavaria and Salzburg by FC Bayern’s youth leader, Rudi Weiß, who was also putting together the Bavarian youth team at the time. In this game I saved two penalties and we won 2: 1,” Maier remembers the early days of his career on his personal homepage. He finally moved to FC Bayern in November 1958, the same year as Franz Beckenbauer. But it wasn’t until he was 18 years old that Maier became a contract player in 1962 before he was number one for Bayern from the first regional league season in 1963/64.
Nevertheless, even at that point in time, it was hard to imagine that Maier would become an icon of his position in just a few years. Germany’s previous model goalkeeper was Toni Turek (1919-1984), who was in goal at the Miracle of Bern in 1954. The international greats were the Russian Lev Yashin (1929-1990), England’s Gordon Banks (1937-2019) and Italy’s Dino Zoff (82), who also has his birthday on February 28th. But Maier had a supporter in national coach Helmut Schön (1915-1996), who called him into the youth team when Sepp Herberger (1897-1977) was still national coach. So it came about that Maier was allowed to go to the 1966 World Cup in England as deputy to the then German number one, Hans Tilkowski (1935-2020).
In any case, in the Bundesliga, which was newly founded in 1963, other champions than FC Bayern initially became champions, such as the Munich Lions in 1965/66 with their own goalkeeper legend Petar Radenkovic (89). But with Bayern’s successes from the first championship in 1968/69 and the European Cup and championship treble in the 1970s, the myth of the best goalkeeper in Germany – and in his time also in the world – emerged. National coach Helmut Schön made Maier Tilkowski’s successor in the national team in 1969, where he was preferred over his biggest competitors Wolfgang Kleff (77) and Norbert Nigbur (75) throughout his career. After the victory at the 1972 European Championships in Belgium, the greatest triumph followed at the 1974 World Cup in their own country. Not least thanks to Anzing’s cat saves, Germany was granted a second World Cup title after 1954.
“Of course you remember it fondly,” Maier would later say again and again when asked about the greatest successes of his career. Those were “completely different times”; people could behave more freely and carefree back then. That’s exactly what you noticed about Maier, both in his active and his subsequent goalkeeping coaching career at Bayern and in the national team: Always up for a flippant comment, Maier brought a good atmosphere wherever he appeared. Whether as the country’s number one, in television appearances or as a goalkeeping coach in the national team and at Bayern: Hardly any German footballer managed the balancing act between ease and performance like Maier.
Until 1979, Maier stood uninterruptedly as Bayern and Germany’s number one between the posts, and since Beckenbauer left for New York in 1977 he was also captain of Munich. With a series of incredible 442 point games in a row, he set a record that seems to last forever. His 95 appearances in the DFB uniform should also be the most by a goalkeeper for a long time; Manuel Neuer (37) only broke this record in 2020. And another one is likely to come soon: Sepp Maier is still Bayern’s record player with 707 appearances, but Thomas Müller (34) has 695 and will play for Munich for at least another year. When the time comes, Maier should take it in stride. He already commented on Neuer: “It was about time.”
Maier would certainly have liked to increase his record, but in 1979 everything changed suddenly. Maier was in a car accident from which he was lucky to escape with his life. Maier later said about the fact that Bayern manager Uli Hoeneß (72), who had just taken office, ensured the right treatment: “Uli saved my life.” Maier then decided to fulfill his contract with FC Bayern, which ran until 1981 (“I’ll train like a man possessed”) and to end his career at the 1982 World Cup in Spain, but the consequences of the internal injuries were too great for this Plan.
So Maier was forced to end his one-time active career. In June 1980, he and 78,000 fans in the sold-out Munich Olympic Stadium said “Hello” at a friendly match between FC Bayern and the national team. But that didn’t mean the end of football: Sepp Maier had been the national goalkeeping coach since 1987 and from 1994 he took Oliver Kahn (54) under his wing as Bayern’s goalkeeping coach until 2008. With this work, Maier ensured that Germany and its Bavarians could continue to count on world-class support for decades to come.
But as is often the case with goalkeepers, Maier also has a strong character and his own opinion. So he repeatedly clashed with head coaches – from the scandal with Pál Csernai (1932-2013) at Maier’s farewell game to the encounter with Jürgen Klinsmann (59), who fired him as national goalkeeping coach in 2004. In 2008, Maier also ended his work at Bayern, shortly before Klinsmann took over the coaching position from Ottmar Hitzfeld (75).
Since then, Maier has enjoyed playing golf and tennis, and he also has ambitions. It was not without pride that he pointed out in an interview with “Bayerischer Rundfunk” in 2013 that he had also become a three-time German junior tennis champion. Hard work and a certain seriousness were always the recipe for success for him. In everything he did, Maier said at the time: “If you do something, then you should do it cleverly.” And that’s exactly what he apparently plans to do for the next 20 years. In his own style, Maier told “Bild am Sonntag” that his late friends Beckenbauer and Müller still had to be patient: “They have to wait up there for their goalkeeper. I want to be 100 years old.”
