Günter Netzer

In the early 1970s, the Mönchengladbach native was regarded as German football’s first rebel. However, his rebellious streak manifested itself less in idealism or opposition to anything, and more in his own headstrong nature. For a professional footballer at the time, it was unusual to run a nightclub as a side job, as he did, and to lead an extravagant lifestyle off the pitch, with a penchant for fast cars. Netzers’ long hair was also rather out of the ordinary.

The pinnacle of his rebellion – in the sense of defiance against authority – was arguably his decision to substitute himself on in the 1973 DFB Cup final, a moment that went on to become one of the competition’s finest hours. “I’ll have a go now,” he said to the legendary manager Hennes Weisweiler, and stepped onto the pitch at the start of extra time, scoring the winning goal just a few minutes later with a thunderous strike to give his Mönchengladbach side a 2–1 victory over their arch-rivals from Cologne. The ball had slipped over the instep of his weaker left foot and, as a result, ended up in the corner of the net, leaving the goalkeeper with no chance.

With his right foot, he epitomised genius, delivering passes from deep in the half. This made the two-time Footballer of the Year at that time the central figure in the Fohlen side’s attractive and successful style of play and – alongside Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Müller – the linchpin of the national team that won the European Championship in Belgium in 1972. “I was very lucky,” he says himself, even after his magnificent football career, first as manager of Hamburger SV, later as a TV rights broker and as a recognised and award-winning TV football pundit. As well as luck, he had, above all, his own distinctive style throughout all his roles.