"We do what we want? Revolutionaries against authority: 16:0!" That was the message displayed on a banner by Bayern Munich fans during their team’s game at Augsburg back in April to commemorate the great revolt within the club of March 1979.
Led by captain Sepp Maier and midfielder Paul Breitner, the Bayern players seized power in Bavaria to overthrow authoritarian, long-time president Wilhelm Neudecker and pave the way for the Uli Hoeness to take over and usher in the modern Bayern Munich.
That Breitner was at the heart of it came as little surprise, since he was someone who personified the term ‘rebel; a player for whom accepting the status quo just wasn’t an option.
“We do what we want? Revolutionaries against authority: 16:0!” That was the message displayed on a banner by Bayern Munich fans during their team’s game at Augsburg back in April to commemorate the great revolt within the club of March 1979.
Led by captain Sepp Maier and midfielder Paul Breitner, the Bayern players seized power in Bavaria to overthrow authoritarian, long-time president Wilhelm Neudecker and pave the way for the Uli Hoeness to take over and usher in the modern Bayern Munich.
That Breitner was at the heart of it came as little surprise, since he was someone who personified the term ‘rebel; a player for whom accepting the status quo just wasn’t an option.
After the club’s golden era in the early 1970s, during which they won three European Cups, Bayern slipped into a veritable crisis, both in sporting and economic terms. In dire straits, club president Neudecker saw only one path towards salvation: Appointing Max Merkel (pictured) as the team’s new manager.
Legendary Austrian coach Merkel had led both Bayern’s rivals 1860 Munich and FC Nurnberg to league titles in the 1960s using questionable methods, earning himself the nickname ‘Peitschenknaller’ – the whip cracker.
Unsurprisingly, Bayern’s players had no desire to endure Merkel’s torture, and after a 4-0 home defeat to Arminia Bielefeld, they made a deal with Neudecker. If the team earned at least three points from their following two away games (with a win worth two points) against Eintracht Braunschweig and Borussia Monchengladbach, popular interim coach Pal Csernai would be allowed to stay on. Otherwise, they would accept Merkel.
Just before the first of those games, key players Maier and Breitner fell ill while star striker Karl-Heinz Rummenigge picked up an injury. Nevertheless, the all-important trio fought through and helped the team secure a 0-0 draw. The jubilation after the final whistle was great, but that turned to anger when the players subsequently learned that Neudecker and Merkel had long since signed a contract.
“Sepp and I went to the team and said, ‘Not with us’,” Breitner later recounted of the incident. Backed by the 14 remaining squad players, he and Meier told Neudecker that evening that if the deal is broken and Merkel took over, the team would go on strike.
Completely taken aback by such a drastic reaction, Neudecker resigned after 17 years in office. Csernai was kept in charge, and the team went onto achieved their now-irrelevant three-point target with a spectacular 7-1 victory over Gladbach.
“That was something that had never happened before in German football,” said Breitner, who was 27 at the time. “The fact that we turned against the coach and thus also against the president, that we took revolutionary steps – that’s something that Germans don’t normally accept.” The public outcry was correspondingly huge, but the revolt was unstoppable.
Maier had to end his career in the summer of 1979 after a car accident, leaving Breitner to take over the captain’s armband. His childhood friend Hoeness, who was the same age but could no longer play due to a knee injury, filled the power vacuum created by Neudecker’s departure at the administrative level and became the youngest general manager in the Bundesliga.
Together, they catapulted Bayern back to the top. Breitner, in collaboration with Rummenigge, led to two league titles while Hoeness ensured the club’s economic recovery with clever advertising deals and transfers.
Breitner and Hoeness had been on the pitch together as Germany won the 1974 World Cup final, with the former already something of a rebel back then as his his flowing mane and beard made him look like Latin American revolutionary Che Guevara.
Breitner’s behaviour gave creed to those comparisons, too. Without being assigned to do so, he converted the penalty to make it 1-1 against the Netherlands in the final, and when the players’ wives were not invited to the subsequent German FA (DFB) victory celebration, the then-22-year-old promptly resigned from the national team – a decision he later reversed.
There are several such contradictions in Breitner’s life. He posed under a picture of the controversial Chinese revolutionary leader Mao Zedong with the German edition of The Peking Review – China‘s state-owned newspaper – in his hands. However, after the 1974 World Cup, he transferred to the ultimate establishment club, Real Madrid, which was exploited by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.
Der Spiegel once dubbed Breitner a “left-wing rebel with a Maserati and a pool”. Just like Hoeness, Breitner used the early forms of football commercialisation to enrich himself, appearing in films and signing advertising contracts with companies such as McDonald’s. In reality, Breitner just did as he pleased without a care for who might be offended by actions.
Breitner ended his playing career in 1983 at the age of just 31. He was later inducted into the Bayern Hall of Fame, during which the club called him “an eccentric, a revolutionary, a maverick, an uncomfortable rebel – a footballer who divided opinion.”
Breitner lived up to these attributes even after his career ended. As a newspaper columnist, he regularly clashed with his former club and, above all, with his childhood friend Hoeness, who was still in charge in Bavaria. Their relationship suffered greatly as a result, but Breitner did eventually return to Bayern as a brand ambassador. Nevertheless, he “talked himself out of part of his own career,” Rummenigge said. “But Paul was always authentic, an exotic character, a little crazy, but also always interesting.”