The iconic defender won everything in the game with Bayern Munich and West Germany, but he was a divisive character who idolised Che Guevara and read books written by Mao Tse-tung
YOU may know Paul Breitner as the wolverine defender who starred for Bayern Munich and West Germany in the 1970s and 1980s.
You may recall his huge hair and equally vast beard.
And you may know he won virtually everything there was to win in the game too.
Listed on his CV are the World Cup, the European Championship, the European Cup, five Bundesliga titles, two La Liga titles and a host of individual awards too.
But there was another side to the man…
He was a football revolutionary…
Most players might take a man bag and some oversized headphones into training each day.
Not Paul Breitner.
No, he took a copy of the Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung’s ‘Little Red Book’ in with him, much to the bafflement of his teammates.
He was also photographed under pictures of another hero of his, the revolutionary Che Guevara, and read the works of Marx and Lenin.
“I was interested in the ideas of Mao and Che Guevara but I wasn’t a Maoist or a communist,” he said in his later life.
“I had to be interested as a young man, to learn, to make mistakes and to do better things.”
He was a free spirit…
When Breitner won the league with Bayern Munich in 1973, Breiter celebrated by dancing around a swimming pool.
Naked.
The subsequent photographs that appeared didn’t go down well with the club’s hierarchy.
Breitner wasn’t happy. “At this s*** club, they can’t even celebrate,” he grumbled.
He tried – and failed – to avoid military service…
Just after he signed for Bayern Munich in 1970, Breitner received notification that he had to join the army.
At the time he was sharing a flat with his teammate Uli Hoeness and the two of them tried their hardest to avoid the draft.
Breitner even hid in the cellar every night when the military police came calling.
Finally, after receiving several threats of punishment and prosecution, Breitner relented and signed up.
But he found himself cleaning the toilets in the barracks at weekends and missing out on playing for Bayern in the Bundesliga.
He rallied against the transfer system…
After he signed for Real Madrid in the summer of 1974, Breitner became increasingly infuriated with the transfer system.
He demanded that he received a proportion of the £500,000 that the Spanish giants paid for him.
“The whole business of transfer fees is unlawful. It’s contrary to human rights and basic human dignity,” he raged, probably as he counted his gargantuan salary.
But he did embrace capitalism as he grew older…
Despite Breitner’s left-leaning political stance, he wasn't afraid to embrace a good deal when he was offered one.
Ahead of the 1982 World Cup finals in Spain, he accepted around £65,000 from a cosmetics company to shave off his trademark beard.
He had also been paid to advertise cigarettes too and appeared in commercials for Volkswagen and McDonald’s.
Cue accusations of hypocrisy. Indeed one Munich newspaper said that Breitner was finding it difficult to balance “his Marx with his Maserati”.
Not that Breitner cared. “Nobody knows me. Nobody is in a position to judge,” he said , counting his money. Again.
He had no time for Franz Beckenbauer…
Despite playing together in the successful Bayern Munich and West Germany teams of the 1970s, Breitner and Der Kaiser didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye on, well, most things.
Matters reached a head when Beckenbauer was boss of the the Germany national team and Brietner openily criticised him, calling him the “gravedigger of football”.
Albeit a gravedigger that steered his team to victory in the World Cup in 1990.
He was still appointed manager of the German national team in 1998…
For a bit.
Yes, after Bertie Vogts resigned in the wake of a disappointing World Cup Finals in France in 1998, the German FA, the DFB, announced Breitner as the new coach of Die Mannschaft.
Just 17 hours later, however, he was out of a job as the reaction to his appointment proved too much for the DFB to withstand.
So he was out and in came Erich Ribbeck instead.
He was always looking for something other than football…
In 1976 Breitner played the part of Sergeant Stark in Potato Fritz, a movie about German immigrants moving to America’s Wild West during the gold rush.
It was as bad as it sounds.
He was always one to experiment…
Having rejoined Bayern Munich in 1978, Breitner agreed to take part in a documentary wherein he would wear a microphone under his shirt for a match against Hamburg.
It was an interesting idea made all the most interesting when Breitner was overheard telling the referee to “lick my a***”.
