Günter Netzer: The football genius turns 80

Even gods grow old, even a god of youth. Günter Theodor Netzer was one such person. A kind of Dorian Gray of football. Like the eternal image of male aesthetics, coupled with the elegance of the beautiful game. “Dä Jünter”: It wasn’t just in his hometown of Mönchengladbach on the Lower Rhine that they worshipped him like a deity when he ruled on the field, with his angular face and long, flowing blond hair.

Everything is lost, long gone, because the Netzer of today is an older gentleman who can look quite grumpy, but usually has a knowing smile. His face is still angular, his voice clear, you can hardly hear the Rhenish sing-song anymore. His hair is now medium-length and much darker. At least he still has it, which is not a given at his age. Günter Netzer will be 80 on September 14th.

Not an unconditional fighter

But he is not forgotten. Older people remember the mythical football genius with nostalgia, and younger people still admire him on YouTube. They too have come to the conclusion that someone like him is rare, even in the heroic sagas of international football.

He was born in Mönchengladbach and grew up in the city center. He was an only child, his father owned a seed shop and his mother a grocery store. At the age of nine he joined Borussia Mönchengladbach and signed his first professional contract in 1963 at the age of 19. He was already a young star, a technically skilled midfielder, the best player in the team of very young talents such as Berti Vogts (77), Jupp Heynckes (79) and Bernd Rupp (82), which was promoted to the Bundesliga two years later.

The two young teams of Gladbach and FC Bayern Munich largely dominated the league. Netzer led the Gladbach “Fohlen-Elf” to two German championships (1970, 1971), scoring 82 goals in 230 matches (with shoe size 47).

He was not an unconditional fighter, but took his breaks during matches. A classic number ten and intelligent, but lazy playmaker with a powerful shot. His overview and intuition, his centimeter-precise passes, which inevitably led to goals, thrilled fans in and around the stadium.

The “FAZ” literary critic Karl Heinz Bohrer: “Netzer’s sudden advance from the depths of the room had ‘thrill’. ‘Thrill’ is the result, the unexpected maneuver. It is the transformation of geometry into energy, the explosion in the penalty area that drives you mad with happiness. ‘Thrill’ is the execution itself, the beginning and the end.”

Between football features and classy discos

Suddenly, Germany had two new stars: the elegant, filigree footballer Franz Beckenbauer (1945-2024) from Bayern Munich and the football pop star Günter Netzer from Borussia Mönchengladbach, who also attracted intellectuals to the stadium or in front of the television. “I am a little proud that I was perhaps the first player that the arts pages took up, that they interpreted things into my way of playing football that we did not express in our crude football language.”

The German national team was already calling in 1965, and at first the individualist Günter Netzer was unable to prevail against the playmaker Wolfgang Overath (80, 1. FC Köln), who was the favourite of national coach Helmut Schön (1915-1996). But in 1972 Beckenbauer and Netzer took over the reins and came up with the rousing “Ramba-Zamba” system, as the “Bild” newspaper wrote, in which they supported each other congenially in steering the team. The clever Schön let them do as they pleased, and the arguably best national team of all time won the European Championship.

Günter Netzer was at the height of his fame and was considered one of the best football directors in the world. In Mönchengladbach he was the absolute ruler anyway, who drove casually through the city in a Porsche, Jaguar and finally a Ferrari, was friends with the painters Markus Lüpertz, Georg Baselitz and Sigmar Polke, wore cool clothes and owned the posh disco “Lover’s Lane”. Anyone who was anyone in the Lower Rhine region had to go to “Jünter” late in the evening and at night. Sometimes you could see him in person. Always sober, always friendly, but somehow also aloof. His girlfriend was, of course, a model.

Power struggle with the coach

His club coach Hennes Weisweiler (1919-1983), the official ruler of Borussia, must have been fed up with all this, because Netzer, who was considered his extended arm on the pitch, did not always run as Weisweiler wanted and talked back. He vividly described this cinematic relationship, in which his close friend Berti Vogts tried to mediate:

“Once again, Weisweiler didn’t speak to me. I had a muscle injury. The doctor said that I needed a six-week break and lots of warmth. So I flew to the Caribbean with my girlfriend for two weeks. I came back, Weisweiler was furious. He said to Berti: ‘Come with me, we need to discuss something.’ He said to me: ‘And you’re coming too, Mr Netzer.’ The three of us walked along side by side until Weisweiler said: ‘Berti, ask your captain where he’s been all this time.’ I walked next to Berti, and Berti asked me, faithfully, how he was, where I’d been. I said: ‘I was in the Caribbean because of the warmth. As the doctor requested.’ It went back and forth like that until I said: ‘Berti, tell your coach that I was away because I had to recover from him.’ Berti protested: ‘I won’t say that’ and ran away. And when Berti was gone, the conversation ended because Weisweiler didn’t want to talk to me.”

In 1973, Günter Netzer signed with Real Madrid, Germany and especially Mönchengladbach’s coach Weisweiler were horrified. In the last game for Borussia, the cup final against old local rivals 1. FC Köln, the insulted coach put his best man on the bench. At halftime, the score was 1:1 in an exciting game. Weisweiler wanted to substitute Netzer, but Netzer refused. So both of them continued to sit next to each other, sulking.

When extra time came, Netzer substituted himself. He stood up, took off his tracksuit jacket, went to the coach and said: “Boss, I’m playing now!” He didn’t say a word, Netzer came onto the pitch, played a one-two with his teammate Rainer Bonhof (72), then “Jünter’s” shot crashed into Cologne’s goal triangle after his second touch. Gladbach won the cup 2:1 thanks to Netzer’s most important goal.

He also had problems with training in Madrid. “I hated the fitness coaches like no other person in the world,” “I hated the fitness coach at Real Madrid the most. He was once the Yugoslavian champion over 1,500 meters. It was absolute hell… And the worst thing was Paul Breitner,” who was under contract in Madrid at the same time. “Breitner was always at the front. He was the fittest player in Europe and he didn’t take me into consideration.”

For three years, “the blonde angel with the big feet”, as the fans in Madrid called him, was the highest-paid Real Madrid footballer and led the Royals to two championships and two cup victories. In 1976, he went to Grasshoppers Zurich, where he ended his active career at the age of 32.

Manager, media entrepreneur, moderator

He was seen a year later in Hamburg, elegant as always, this time wearing a tie. Günter Netzer was manager of HSV from 1978 to 1986, and it was the club’s most successful period. Netzer hired legendary coaches Branko Zebec (1929-1988) and Ernst Happel (1925-1992), and HSV won the German championship three times during this time (1979, 1982, 1983) and won the European Cup in 1983, the forerunner of the Champions League.

Günter Netzer returned to Switzerland, founded an advertising agency and became a major media entrepreneur who was extremely successful in trading TV rights. He has also been a Swiss citizen since 2015.

In addition, he was a football commentator for ARD for over 13 years until 2010, together with TV journalist Gerhard Delling (65). The two were very popular for their provocative but amusing friction in front of the camera and were awarded the Grimme Prize in 2000 and the Media Prize for Language Culture in 2008 for their “high linguistic level”.

Günter Netzer has been married to model Elvira Lang since 1987; their daughter Alana is now 37. In 2016, he underwent six bypasses in a four-and-a-half-hour heart operation; his wife Alana had him.

Even in his old age, he has remained a “sensible soul, a linguistic artist and a gentleman” (). He is enjoying his retirement – “My life is so boring, as befits an 80-year-old” – with his family in Zurich. “Humble and grateful” for the good fortune that has happened to him in life.