Finally, the player that I've always wanted to get my hands on.
From the Depths of space comes
Karajan
How do you explain a man that owned a bar but never drank alcohol?
The son of a humble greengrocer who ended up running a notorious nightclub?
Who kept fast cars but never raced them? Who wore his blonde hair long like an Edwardian poet but insisted it was to hide his ugliness? A man who was nicknamed after a musical legend with a questionable past? An astute businessman who hated commercialism? A sex symbol who married an enigmatic goldsmith? A man who intellectuals salivated over but was apolitical?
And that was off the pitch.
Netzer's masterpiece in Germany’s ground-breaking 3-1 victory at Wembley in the Euro 1972 - a performance that caused the cultural critic of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Karl Heinz Bohrer, to write in an essay the immortal words, “
Netzer came from the depths of space”.
Günter Netzer had overwhelmed Alf Ramsey's side in such exhilarating fashion that there were no German words to describe it. Literary scholar Karl Heinze Bohrer used the English word 'thrill', writing about Netzer's charging forward from the
'depth of space' in FAZ: "Thrill is is the transformation of geometry into energy, an explosion in the box that makes you mad with happiness".
'Dream football from the year 2000' - exclaimed L'Equipe.
Paul Breitner said:
Günter Netzer was at the height of his potential. In my first year at Real, he played like I’ve never seen anybody else, except Franz Beckenbauer perhaps. Günter’s leadership on the pitch was absolutely gigantic, superior even to what he did for Germany in 1972 and 1973
German manager Helmut Schon said:
He was a master at changing the pace of the game. He would spray long passes over 40 metres, play direct, hit short or long balls and show a phenomenal awareness of distance.
Matt Busby said:
A watching Matt Busby, in attendance that fateful night - where a Netzer inspired Gladbach side ripped La Grande's Inter to shreds - shook his head and simply declared, “There is no cure against this Mönchengladbach side”.
Detailed write-up to follow...
.
.
That would have been a ridiculous left side.