Just weeks after scoring the penalty that levelled the 1974 World Cup Final in the Olympia Stadion In Munich Paul Breitner was in pre–season training with Real Madrid at a time the legendary Spanish club was in a slump, having not won the La Liga title in two years. With the relaxing of the rules on foreign players during the Franco era, Real Madrid added Guenter Netzer to their ranks the previous year while Barcelona heralded the arrival of Johan Cruyff at the Nou Camp the same season. For Barca the arrival of the Dutchman saw them secure the first La Liga title in fifteen years and gave the Catalunya region the political profile that the Franco regime had been keen to avoid.
Although foreign players had been allowed even as far back as the fifties the rules were often twisted with the likes of Alfredo di Stéfano, Ferenc Puskás and Ladislao Kubala all naturalised as Spanish. By the mid seventies it was more deliberate and started a trend that still permeates Spanish football today. In fact for decades the rivalry of Real Madrid and Barcelona has been such that they have attracted the biggest names in the game over all starting in 1973 with Cruyff where a year later they added Johan Neeskens.
That group pf players became part of the mid seventies battles that came to be known as El Clasico with José Antonio Camacho tracking Johan Cruyff relentlessly all over the park, Johan Neeskens outrunning an aging Guenter Netzer and Paul Breitner earning his keep against Carlos Rexach. The current Spanish manager, Vicente Del Bosque, was the dominant midfielder after Netzer departed in 1976. For the club the addition of Breitner to Real Madrid brought success with two La Liga wins in 1975 and 76 along with the Copa del Rey in 1975.
Whereas Netzer had come to Madrid defiantly trying to rekindle his career, given his failure to hold his place from Wolfgang Overath in the 1974 World Cup Finals, Breitner arrived as a young star armed with a world cup winners medal and oodles of experience - multiple Bundesliga titles, Euro 72 medal and a European Cup medal with Bayern that same spring - with an instantly recognisable afro hair style.
Breitner’s time at Real Madrid brought domestic success albeit the club were unable to regain their foothold in Europe in a competition that was being dominated by Bayern Muenich who won the last of their treble in 1976. Indeed the closest Real Madrid came to a European Cup in the 70’s was when the Final was hosted at the Santiago Bernabeu in the 1979/80 season and Nottingham Forest secured their second trophy having beaten Kevin Keegan's Hamburg. Where, ironically, Guenter Netzer was the club general manager.
At Real Breitner played less of his unorthodox defensive role and more a midfield role with a work rate that released Netzer to deliver the pin-point passes for which he was best suited. A gifted player with deft touch and endless physical strength Breitner quickly captured the imagination of a wise Real Madrid public familiar with a different ethos and more deliberate style of football at the time. Whereas Netzer had found the pressure tough in 1973 as the only foreigner at the club - especially when the Real did not win La Liga – Breitner provided ample support once he arrived and revived his career to a large degree.
According to his biography at Bayern Breitner was “eccentric, revolutionary, firebrand, uncompromising rebel” and to this day can attract differing views as a person given he has always been willing to state his opinions on matters beyond football. In fact his support for a worker’s strike in Spain during his time at Real Madrid caused a significant stir and led him to be labelled a Marxist sympathiser by the Spanish press at one point. However, on the pitch he remembered solely for his outstanding footballing talent and in his early days - before the law changed - playing without shin guards and his socks rolled down to his ankles.
Born in Kolbermoor Breitner started playing football as a six-year-old for local side SV Kolbermoor and in 1961 moved to ESV Freilassing where his father was an administrative officer and acted as his youth coach. Soon after he got the call into Udo Lattek’s German youth side and met his future team-mate and colleague Uli Hoeness. Years later when Lattek was appointed coach at Bayern in 1969 he brought both his pupils with him where Breitner quickly became a regular in the Bayern side.
At 19 Breitner made his debut for the national side in a 7-1 win against Norway in Oslo in 1971 and the following year was part of success as Germany lifted the 1972 European Championship title in Belgium. At the 1974 World Cup in Germany Paul scored the all-important equaliser from the penalty spot in Germany’s 2-1 victory over Holland in the Final
“I wasn’t supposed to take the spot-kick but I was nearest to the ball,” he admitted after the game.
Although that goal has always been considered as his most important by the media Breitner has a different view
“I scored three goals at the 1974 World Cup and the most important was the first goal in our first match, against Chile in Berlin. I scored the opening goal, and that was the fundamental reason we made the next round, and why we grew together into a team. “
But in the final when Jack Taylor blew the whistle for the penalty Breitner's memories are very revealing
“I felt in good form so I went over, fetched the ball and placed it on the spot. I didn't notice anything going on around me. From very early on, I learnt to concentrate absolutely in critical moments, using autogenic training. I'd also made an important observation - someone who approaches a situation like that intending to become a hero, is destined to become the biggest loser.
“So I put the ball on the spot without any conscious thought. Later, Wolfgang Overath told me he had come up to me and asked: "Hey Paul, are you going to shoot?" I must have said: "Get out of the way, I'm going to bury it." I started my run-up, and I saw the keeper making a sidestep, offering me the right-hand side from my perspective. I thought he would dive to the right when the time came. That movement would leave the left-hand side completely open, because he would have shifted his weight and I'd only have to slot the ball home.
“Afterwards there was a lot of talk about me being clinical and having nerves of steel. But it wasn't like that: I wasn't clinical and didn't have nerves of steel. It was completely deliberate. It was a situation, a moment when I needed absolute concentration. You can't think about what you're doing, the positive and negative consequences either way. If you did, you'd just run up and trip over your own feet from sheer terror.
In the summer of 1977 Breitner returned to the Bundesliga when he joined Eintracht Braunschweig and spent one season there before making a return to Bayern in 1978.
It was his second stint at Bayern that Breitner really became the boss and was soon appointed captain. Then alongside Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Breitner picked up his fourth and fifth Bundesliga titles in 1980 and 1981, and in 1982 he once again lifted the DFB Cup.
The Bayern captain returned to the German side in 1981 having retired from the international stage after the game against Greece on 11 October 1975 in Düsseldorf, reversing his earlier decision to win another 20 caps.
When Jupp Derwall asked him to return to the national team in 1981 it was the appeal of returning to Spain the following summer that made the decision easy for Paul Breitner, who was approaching 31 years of age.
Ironically he ended up back at the Santiago Bernabeu one hot July day in 1982 playing against an Italian side that had looked as if they would not even make it out of the early group stages in that World Cup. Having missed a penalty early in the game Italy then went on to take control when Tardelli scored and by the time Breitner went to take his second penalty in a World Cup Final a victory was beyond German reach. Regardless the former Real Madrid player struck the ball home adding his name to the history books, along with only two other players at that time - Vava and Pele.
Since that day another former Real legend, Zinedine Zidane, has joined that elite club of World Cup Final penalty takers.
Breitner’s career ended in the 1982-3 season through injury following a challenge from SV
Hamburg’s Wolfgang Rolffa and following his retirement Breitner worked for Adidas, then became a TV pundit and later joined his 1974 team-mate, Franz Beckenbauer, at Bayern Munich’s as part of the clubs backroom staff.
In 1998, Breitner was announced as the new national coach by German Football Association president Egidius Braun only to see the decision reconsidered 17 hours later, making Breitner the shortest serving national coach ever.
First Published February 2011
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