HAMBURG, 31 May 2003 — Was Franz Beckenbauer, Germany’s larger-than-life football icon generally known as “Der Kaiser”, involved in match fixing as a teenager? That is what, at least, some Germans are wondering after Beckenbauer reportedly said last week that he and his Munich teammates offered little resistance in a 1967 match at Eintracht Braunschweig which they lost 5-2.
Surprisingly, his statements have made only a few headlines in Germany and abroad but Beckenbauer has in the past said all sorts of things on all sorts of issues, and the match did take place 36 years ago.
The comments come at a time when Arminia Bielefeld goalkeeper Mathias Hain relayed his match-fixing fears around last weekend’s Bundesliga finale between Nuremberg and Bayer Leverkusen, which prompted an investigation against Hain by the national soccer federation DFB.
And Beckenbauer isn’t a nobody, he is a World Cup winner as a player and coach, captain of multiple European Cup winners Bayern Munich over which he presides now, and head of Germany’s 2006 World Cup organizing com-mittee.
“Hain faces a penalty for unsportsmanlike conduct. But looking at Beckenbauer’s self-accusation such a rul-ing would become a farce; especially if Beckenbauer isn’t questioned at all,” said the Sueddeutsche Zeitung (SZ) in an editorial titled “Charm or Fairplay” yesterday.
“Fairplay in German sports defines itself in the following way: Unsportsmanlike is a person who expresses an evident suspicion. Sportsmanlike is a high-ranking official, who long after the statute of limitations presents a wrongdoing as if it was a prank,” the SZ added.
Hain issued his allegations after Nuremberg President Michael A. Roth said he would like Leverkusen to stay in the top flight because his relegated club would then have one rival less in their quest for re-promotion. Leverkusen won 1-0 and Hain’s Bielefeld were relegated.
According to Beckenbauer, the 1967 episode allegedly took place to deny Bayern’s crosstown rivals 1860 Munich back-to-back Bundesliga titles.
“I know that we lost 5-2 but that was fine with us. At the time we didn’t want our city rivals 1860, who had the better team and the better chances, to win the Bundesliga title again.
“I don’t want to go as far as to say that we lost deliberate-ly. Let’s put it this way: We only offered minimal resistance,” Beckenbauer told Sat 1 TV earlier this week.
The game, which took place on April 15, 1967, ended Bayern’s Bundesliga title chances but they went on to beat 1860 in the cup semifinals en route to trophies in the German Cup and the European Cupwinners’ Cup. Braunschweig, meanwhile, won the Bundesliga ahead of 1860. The 5-2 result led to raised eyebrows at the time, and Beckenbauer’s later teammate Paul Breitner said he was not surprised by the allegations.
“There were almost certainly some dubious matches in the first eight or nine years of the Bundesliga,” Breitner told Sat 1 TV in reference to incidents culminating in a fixing scheme revealed in 1971 — which incidentally cost Bielefeld a place in the top flight. Breitner also said that Beckenbauer was probably “not quite aware” of his statement’s dimension and that it could come back on him “like a boomerang”.
However, that appears not to have happened.
