March 6, 1987 is not a nice day for Harald “Toni” Schumacher – and the absolute low point of his career. The Cologne keeper is kicked out of the national team on his birthday. The reason: He published sensational revelations about German football in a book!
“The people love treason, but hate the traitor.” 35 years ago, the then national goalkeeper Harald “Toni” Schumacher wrote the most acclaimed German football book of all time. As a result, the Cologne keeper’s career was to be turned upside down within just two weeks: “What happened back in March 1987 was something I didn’t want.” And yet, a few years after its publication, Schumacher once said: “I would write the book again immediately. Better a lion for a year than a sheep for ten years. How should I know that truth is forbidden in Germany?”
For the two-time vice world champion, this was and is always the decisive point when looking at the “emotional descent” followed by the “crash landing”. According to Schumacher, his mother told him to “always be honest” and now he was “punished for the truth”: “I didn’t want to whitewash, I wanted to paint the picture as I saw it. Fats Oil paints instead of watercolor.”
The 1. FC Köln keeper was able to prove early on that he didn’t always have his mouth under control during his long career. After Schumacher gave an interview to “fussball-magazin” in October 1983, the monthly magazine announced the interview in bold letters on the cover as follows: “Our national goalkeeper makes a clean sweep. Toni Schumacher: ‘Now I’ll unpack!’ An open-hearted one Interview by the Cologne native about disagreements and misunderstandings.” At the beginning of the conversation, the keeper, according to the magazine, was still wearing sunglasses, but at the end he acted with his visor open.
It’s getting lonely around the “Tünn”
And although Schumacher liked to go offensively public with his opinions, thirty years after the publication of his spectacular book he said that he should have sought “even more persistent, even more intensive dialogue” with his colleagues and those in charge. He shouldn’t have “given up in frustration and written a book”. But he had announced this work even earlier. As early as October 1986, “fussball-magazin” said: “National goalkeeper Toni Schumacher is among the book authors. In March 1987, the German footballer of the year will draw up a portrait of German football based on personal experiences, which will be published by Droemer-Knaur-Verlag and has the working title ‘The Goalie’s Solitude’.” As we know today: The title was changed to “Anpfiff” – and the content was also sharpened.
A real feature that immediately raised suspicions in the media was the choice of author. Schumacher’s manager Schmitz and his protégé did not work with a German ghostwriter when creating the book, but chose the French journalist Michel Meyer as the author. They are said to have said to him: “You’re French, but you write better German than we do, so you do the book.”
When the first preprint of Schumacher’s works appeared in “Spiegel” on February 23, 1987, a two-week ride through hell began for the Cologne national goalkeeper – with the final high and low point on March 6th. Immediately after the publication of the preprint, the doping issue was hyped up in the media as the actual scandal of the book. Mainly because the entire Bundesliga quickly acquitted itself of the accusation that anyone had ever taken banned substances at any time. Author Michel Meyer was resigned to the mendacious reactions: “I’m amazed at the hypocritical attitude of the DFB. For a few days I’ve been thinking of a chanson by Guy Béart, where the refrain begins: ‘He has the truth, so we have to execute him .'” An important sentence if you want to understand the reactions and the degree of outrage and Schumacher’s subsequent thoughts about this restless time.
Schumacher still defends the book today
In addition to the doping issue, it was above all the many small tips against professional colleagues that caused a stir. For example, the Cologne native wrote about Schalke national team colleague Olaf Thon: “Many young players are lazy sacks. And a few are criminally stupid. Olaf Thon is a prime example.” Even in his hometown of Düren, Schumacher was no longer wanted after the publication. Because in his book he called former neighbors “antisocial”, fathers “alcoholics” and mothers “a mixture of slut and pliers”, the sports committee invited him out of a celebration.
Ben Redelings is a passionate “chronicler of football madness” and a supporter of the glorious VfL Bochum. The bestselling author and comedian lives in the Ruhr area and maintains his legendary anecdote treasure chest. For ntv.de he writes down the most exciting and funniest stories on Mondays and Saturdays. More information about Ben Redelings, his current dates and his book with the best columns (“Between Puff and Barcelona”) can be found on his page www.scudetto.de.
The rest is history. The reactions too. Bayern keeper Jean-Marie Pfaff stated straight out: “I hate to say it, but for me Schumacher is a traitor. Great players have to be role models. Toni should look in the mirror and spit in front of himself.” And Sepp Maier added: “It can only be that after the World Cup in Mexico, where he undoubtedly did well, Schumacher thought he was omnipotent and nobody could harm him. I’ve written six books, but one like this I wouldn’t write a book today. That’s not the way to go.” But for Schumacher it is still important to emphasize more than thirty years later: “I didn’t get a single injunction, no lawsuit for defamation, because everything I wrote in my book was true.”
What at least they know: Schumacher’s expulsion in Cologne took the career of another great national team goalkeeper in a completely different direction. Bodo Illgner had already signed a contract in Nuremberg shortly before the momentous book publication. Now he suddenly stood like a one in the FC goal and of course was not for sale. The 1st FCN was willing to talk – but demanded a distance sum of 300,000 marks. The FC had to pay. A good decision.
To this day, the Schumacher book and the scandal surrounding his work is a great legend in Bundesliga history. Never before or since has a book by a German footballer caused such a stir and excitement. And to this day, Harald “Toni” Schumacher cannot understand what happened to him back then: “It wasn’t the grievances that were eliminated, but the one who addressed them openly.” As you can say in retrospect: unfortunately not a completely wrong accusation from the former national goalkeeper.
