Icone. Legend. honorary captain. Jürgen Grabowski was all that – and much more. The fact that he died now, on Thursday evening, at the age of 77 is a great blow and an immense loss. Not just for his club, for Frankfurt Eintracht. But for all football fans, for whom the esthete Grabowski has given countless happy hours.
“It is incomprehensible to all of us that Jürgen Grabowski has passed away,” said club president Peter Fischer, who was deeply affected. Board spokesman Axel Hellmann, 27 years younger than Eintracht’s honorary captain, spoke of “perhaps the most perfect player to have played for Eintracht”. Hellmann is right when he says: “His aura still has an effect today. Grabi, who was so fond of attending our Eintracht games, gave the club a cross-generational identity.”
What a football player: That’s how you know Jürgen Grabowski, the strategist of Eintracht, who shaped this club like no other with his game.
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Image: Witters
At the age of twenty-one, Jürgen Grabowski, born in Wiesbaden on July 7, 1944, moved from FV Biebrich 02 to Eintracht in Riederwald. It was immediately clear: someone is coming to Frankfurt who will set standards and shape an epoch. Grabowski right away in the Bundesliga? Of course. They seemed to have been waiting for someone like him in the Riederwald. A gifted dribbler and technician. The man for special moments, special passes and special goals. In his first season he scored ten goals in 27 appearances. Of course, he also made it into the national team and was part of the squad that finished second at the 1966 World Cup in England. Four years later, at the World Cup in Mexico, things happened very quickly – and it was said: Grabowski, the best substitute in the world.
In the “game of the century” against Italy, Grabowski hit the cross to “ Schnellinger of all people” (cult commentary by Ernst Huberty). The Italian professional scored the equalizing goal in the last second before the grandiose semi-final game was lost 3:4 after extra time. In 1972 he became European champion. The highlight, however, was his third World Cup, which became a sporting highlight for Grabowski. Maybe it was coincidence, maybe not. That’s right: on his 30th birthday, he and his Eintracht teammate Bernd Hölzenbein became world champions in 1974 at the Munich Olympic Stadium. Grabowski on the summit. Just the right time to end his international career after 44 games in which he scored five goals.
Grabowski was not only a man of honor and a man of the world in the sporting sense. The fans were already singing in the 1970s: “Germany’s pride, the grave and the wood.” In 1974 and 1975 they won the DFB Cup. The 1975 victory against MSV Duisburg made history that still has an impact today: The supporters composed another song that is sung at every game in the stadium: “We saw Eintracht in the final, with Jürgen, with Jürgen, you played so well and she played so beautifully with Jürgen Grabowski”. The introduction to the song “Black and White Like Snow” became a declaration of love for Grabowski.
World Champion 1974: Jürgen Grabowski (9) on the lap of honor
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Image: Witters
Even today, some supporters resent the record national player Lothar Matthäus that their role model Jürgen Grabowski was unable to continue his career after a foul by the then Gladbach player in 1980. Grabowski, who was Eintracht’s spiritus rector in 441 Bundesliga games and scored 109 goals in the process, was no longer able to play an active role in winning the UEFA Cup on May 21, 1980. But the fans showed instinct at the time. When the trophy was handed over, they shouted for minutes: “Grabowski, Grabowski.” Hölzenbein, who received the trophy, immediately passed the trophy on to Grabowski to the thunderous applause of the 60,000 fans.
When football finally came to an end in October – the national team came to the farewell game, of course – there were a total of 555 competitive games and 151 goals that Grabowski gave his unity. The player Grabowski then became the functionary Grabowski. A man with a heart, who looked after the team together with Klaus Mank for a few weeks in 1983 and worked on the board of directors of the association until 1992. As precise as Grabowski shone and shone on the football pitch, his passion on the golf course was just as precise. He always kept an eye on his insurance agency in Taunusstein. In the place where he built a house with his wife Helga.
2017 at the cup final in Berlin: Jürgen Grabowski
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Image: dpa
When Eintracht celebrated its 100th birthday in 1999, the Frankfurt thrash metal band Tankard set the fansong “Schwarz und Weiß wie Schnee” to music. The memory of Grabowski officially returned to the stadium in the mid-2000s, because the anthem was sung in the supporting program immediately before the start of the game. “Of course it makes me proud when the whole stadium sings the song,” Grabowski said in an interview at the time.
In 2017, at the DFB Cup final in the Berlin Olympic Stadium, Jürgen Grabowski was in the interior at a moving moment and very close to the game. He saw Tankard up close and loudly singing “Black and White Like Snow” to 30,000 fans. Afterwards he recorded a video with the band in the museum that was about Grabowski and the DFB Cup. A year later, as the club had promised in its “The Return of the Eagles” campaign, not only the team but also honorary captain Grabowski returned to Berlin – and after the coup against Bayern, he actually celebrated the return of “his” trophy.
It was known that Grabowski had not been well in recent years and that he was in poor health. Nevertheless, there was always the hope that the genius of Eintracht would somehow make it. In autumn 2021 he pulled himself together several times to see “his” Eintracht live in the stadium.
With Jürgen Grabowski goes the greatest of all Eintracht players.
