Mourning Franz Beckenbauer

Franz Beckenbauer captained West Germany to victory in the 1972 European Championship and 1974 World Cup. As a player for Bayern Munich, he won four Bundesliga titles, the DFB Cup four times, the European Cup three times as well as the European Cup Winners’ Cup and the Intercontinental Cup once. Beckenbauer was also a US champion three times with Cosmos New York and added another German league title to his name with Hamburger SV. As a coach, Germany’s Footballer of the Century won the 1990 World Cup with the national team and the Bundesliga and the UEFA Cup with Bayern.

“Franz Beckenbauer defined German and international football over decades like no other,” said Claus Vogt, VfB Stuttgart president and chairman of the supervisory board. “He is and always will be one of the greats of our sport worldwide – a football legend and the greatest player Germany has ever produced. VfB Stuttgart shares in the grief with the Beckenbauer family and FC Bayern Munich. We will honour the memory of Franz Beckenbauer.”

“Franz Beckenbauer was without doubt the shining light of German football and one of its most important figures, on and off the pitch” added Alexander Wehrle, CEO of VfB Stuttgart and chairman of the DFB GmbH & Co. supervisory board. “His style was unmatched, his charisma proverbial and his status worthy of being called ‘Kaiser’. We are immensely sad that German football has lost such a formative personality to whom we are forever grateful. We are losing a person who was always an inspiration to me and a big piece of German football in every way.”