Part 2 of tribute to Franz Beckenbauer: The slap that meant red over blue

FC Bayern mourns the loss of Franz Beckenbauer: a true all-rounder, club icon - the Kaiser. A playmaker beyond the game. Widely travelled and yet deeply rooted. As a farewell, we shed light on his life. FC Bayern will forever be the Kaiser’s empire - because without Beckenbauer, everything would be different at this club today. Part 2 of our series: the slap that meant red over blue

A history-defining slap

It’s hard to believe that a single slap changed the history of German and in fact world football, but it’s true. It saw a king lay a hand on a young Franz Beckenbauer, who would later become the emperor.

In summer 1958, Gerhard König decided in a youth match to give Beckenbauer a slap. It was an event that changed the course of history. As a result, the young Franz – by no means a child of sadness – opted not to join 1860 as originally envisaged, but to the then still quite small FC Bayern. “The good Lord decides everyone's path”, he later said about this story, and his was not blue, but red. It’s an event people can smile about now, as the König (king) of all people paved the way for the future Kaiser (emperor).

Back in August 1958, König, who was actually a goalkeeper, was playing as an outfield player at a mini-tournament in Neubiberg and came across one of the city's biggest talents at SC 1906 Munich. It was considered a foregone conclusion that Beckenbauer would transfer to 1860 with five teammates. After a scything tackle, there was a battle of words, both got into it in the heat of the moment, and just as the referee was looking away, a slap. The game continued as normal and there was no reaction even after the Blues won 2-1. For young Franz and his teammates, however, one thing was clear: “We're not going to this club.” Beckenbauer would probably not have become Der Kaiser with the Lions. Certainly a famous footballer, he had what it took, but he wouldn't have met general manager Robert Schwan or president Wilhelm Neudecker, who supported him. And Emperor of Giesing? No, that wouldn't have been right.

Picture-book career at Bayern

Beckenbauer and Bayern, on the other hand, were a perfect match right from the start. He once scored 100 goals in a youth season, and soon the first team was calling. It was a young team with Zlatko ‘Cik’ Cajkovski as an imaginative coach whose players were eager to conquer the world. They reached the Bundesliga after a brief wait, and after promotion in 1965 there was no stopping them. Bayern won the DFB Cup in both 1966 and 1967, also lifting the European Cup Winners' Cup in the latter. The first double in the club's history followed in 1969, and in the mid-1970s they were untouchable, winning the European Cup three years in a row, which is a feat still unmatched by a German club. After spectacular World Cups in 1966 and 1970, Beckenbauer also lifted the European Championship in 1972 and the World Cup at home in Munich in the summer of 1974, almost like an encore, and these titles were further highlights of his picture-book career.

If you study the pictures from those days today, you always see a young man with a mischievous, playful smile on his lips - and a largely stain-free jersey. Images like this populate entire galleries, they trigger goosebumps; unabashedly casual images of the lightness of being, and yet one should never be mistaken about Beckenbauer: There was an ambition in this man that only very few could match, and there was always hard work behind everything. “Wer ko, der ko,” as they say in Munich, which literally translates as “if you can, you can”. Who's going to stop me when I've got what it takes? I'll show you, simple. In his own special way, the Kaiser also breathed a good portion of Mia san Mia into FC Bayern. He lived this motto, promoted and implemented it at the eventual German record champions over the decades, as a player and later as a coach, president and incomparable character. Beckenbauer was always sharp, both on and off the pitch.

Part 3 of our series tomorrow: the free man.

You can read part 1 of the series here: