First Mario Zagallo, then Franz Beckenbauer. Within a few days, football’s most distinguished club has been reduced to a lone, living member. Only Didier Deschamps is left of the select band who won the World Cup as both player and manager. Even in illustrious company, Beckenbauer had a capacity to stand out: like Deschamps, he was not merely part of a glorious team but a World Cup-winning captain.
Beckenbauer was a triple European Cup-winning captain, too, a record he shares with Sergio Ramos. He reached four World Cup finals, losing as well as winning as both player and manager. In his ‘other’ World Cup, in 1970, it took arguably the competition’s greatest semi-final to deny him a fifth final: Italy 4-3 West Germany. Even when he went to Hamburg in his mid-thirties, he won a Bundesliga title that allowed them to become European Cup winners. He only dabbled in club management and yet still won league titles in two countries and a Uefa Cup. Wherever he turned his attentions, Beckenbauer was the constant on the biggest of stages, the byword for success, the regal figure who gravitated to the top. His nickname of Der Kaiser conveyed an imperial authority; so did Beckenbauer the footballer: he started off running games from midfield, then did so from sweeper and then ruled from the technical area.
