Christoph Daum: a selection of his best sayings

Christoph Daum is dead. The football world has not only lost a successful coach, but also a person who knew how to inspire with his sayings.

For years, Christoph Daum was one of the most dazzling coaches in German professional football, and during this time he achieved legendary status. On Saturday, Daum lost his battle with lung cancer at the age of 70, as his family confirmed. The football world will remember Daum as a person who knew how to polarize and for whom no challenge seemed too great.

In the mid-1980s, the sports scientist became head coach of Bundesliga club 1. FC Köln at just 32 years of age – and in this role he immediately took on big names like Uli Hoeneß. The ongoing feuds with the manager and president of FC Bayern Munich, which were reported in the media, made Daum famous.

Not everyone liked his demeanor, which some interpreted as arrogance: he was either admired or despised – there was hardly anything in between for the Zwickau native. Due to his many sensational TV appearances, Daum was also known as the “loudspeaker of the league” and was considered one of the most conspicuous representatives of German football.

Christoph Daum – always has a saying in store

Some of the sayings that Daum came up with during his career also contributed to this reputation. “Others raise their children bilingually, I raise them ambidextrous,” he once said. When he was introduced as the new coach of Eintracht Frankfurt in March 2011, he caused laughter at the press conference when he declared: “When the head is working properly, it is the third leg.” As coach of Bayer Leverkusen in 2000, he honored the club’s then long-time championship rivals Bayern Munich with the words: “Even their cleaning lady has won the championship ten times.”

You can read what other sayings Daum had in store in this collection of quotes: