“For me,” Helmut Schön said of Franz Beckenbauer in February 1965 after calling him up to the West German team for the first time, “he is the player of the future. Maybe not in midfield, maybe up front.”
People always looked at Beckenbauer and saw in him a being from another era, and that meant that for a long time no one really knew what to make of him. He was handsome, charismatic and languid, a player with an effortless elegance guaranteed to infuriate those who believed the game was about zeal, sweat and extortion. He was technically gifted. He saw things that others did not see. He had grace and intelligence.
Related: Obituary of Franz Beckenbauer
From his teenage years it was clear that Beckenbauer would become a top-level player. But in what position? No one could work it out. And so he effectively created a role for himself. Beckenbauer is now considered the great example of the libero, but he was not a libero in the Italian sense, he sat behind a tough marker and initiated attacks with long-range passes. As he himself said, if he was like someone in Helenio Herrera’s great Internazionale team who popularized the idea of a libero by winning two European Cups with their catenaccioit was left back Giacinto Facchetti, a fine defender who would charge forward to create angles in midfield and join the attack.
Beckenbauer’s early career was a story of a player looking for a role. When he made his Bayern debut as an 18-year-old in 1964, in the promotion play-offs against St. Pauli, he operated on the left wing. In his next match, against Tasmania Berlin, he dropped back to play as a centre-back when Rainer Ohlhauser was pushed forward as Bayern hunted for an equalizer and did well enough to play there again against Borussia Neunkirchen. In the second group match against St. Pauli, he started at half, then dropped into defense to help deal with the threat from Guy Acolatse, and finished at forward as Bayern hunted for a winner.
West German sides at the time tended to play an adaptation of the WM, with one of the halves withdrawing behind the centre-back to play as a player. Ausputzer – literally: cleaner – but he had no creative assignment as he would have done in Italy. Instead, the centre-back picked out the opposition centre-forward, but he had a limited license to step forward, knowing he had cover behind him. Beckenbauer went much further than anyone else.
Bayern missed out on promotion by one point that season, but reached the Bundesliga the following campaign with Beckenbauer as their regular centre-back, despite constant rumors in the newspapers that he might be better deployed as one of the more creative midfielders.
Bayern coach Zlatko Cajkovski apparently had similar misgivings and signed the combative Dieter Danzberg as his centre-back that summer, allowing Beckenbauer to move further forward. But Danzberg was sent off in the opening match of the following season, a derby against 1860 Munich, and was ruled out for eight weeks. Beckenbauer stepped into his position and never left it, capping a fine first top campaign against SV Meiderich in the 1966 German Cup final.
Beckenbauer’s forward movements were limited by having to deal with centre-forward Rüdiger Mielke, but with eight minutes remaining and Bayern leading 3–2, Ohlhauser won the ball back and suddenly became aware that Beckenbauer was left. He picked it out, Beckenbauer ran on and scored the decisive goal from the edge of the penalty area. His role as libero was confirmed and, with Georg Schwarzenbeck as an essential but largely unsung stopper alongside him, would continue to underpin Bayern’s success in the 1970s.
For the national team, Beckenbauer’s role was more controversial. For that first match, in February 1965, an unofficial friendly against Chelsea, Beckenbauer operated in midfield while Schön experimented with a back four. Apart from two games during a tour of South and Central America in 1968, when Willi Schulz was used as a man marker and Beckenbauer had to take up his role in the back four, he remained there until 1971, when Schön finally left agreed to let Beckenbauer play as the libero.
The following year, Beckenbauer found himself at the heart of the West Germany side that, beating England 3-1 at Wembley in the first leg of the Euro 72 quarter-final, produced a spellbinding half-hour of brilliance. It was, said L’Équipe, “football from the year 2000”. This was finally Beckenbauer’s age.
The truth, however, was that as advanced as West Germany seemed compared to Alf Ramsey’s fading England, it was football of the early 1970s. Trying to keep the game in the shade of the main stand in the heat of Léon during the 1970 World Cup, it is said, had taught West Germany how to manipulate possession, and the freedom Beckenbauer had to step out of the backline and to offer a little extra. man, was critical in allowing them to operate that way. The style, a kind of total football without the pressure, brought with it both the 1972 European Championship and the 1974 World Cup.
Time finally caught up with the man from the future. As a coach, Beckenbauer was conservative. “A defensive attitude,” he said, “is in keeping with German nature… we get stuck in it, we tell the opponent’s play and then force our play on him.”
When Klaus Augenthaler suggested switching to a back four, Beckenbauer emphasized that “our character, our system” was a libero plus marker. It produced two World Cup finals in 1986 and 1990, the latter of which won, but probably delayed the advent of pressing, leading to the lost decade of the 1990s (despite the odd blip of winning Euro 96) and the subsequent restart.
But why would Beckenbauer have been a great theorist? Why would he have been part of the tactical avant-garde as a manager? As a player, by being who he was without having to conceptualize it, he had changed the way the game was played. He emerged as a player out of time and made sure football adapted to him.