CONTINUED...
The Gladbach’s players’ frustration over the decision was understandable according to the Dutch referee. Dropsmans himself had seen the situation, and despite Inter’s claims that Boninsegna had suffered a head wound after the can had hit his head, Dropsmans always stated that he thought that the striker was putting up an act (meaning that he could have continued playing). Whilst UEFA concluded that the can had been full of liquid, Dropsmans maintained that it was empty. The fact that the head wound Boninsegna couldn’t be spotted on him one day after the match may have indicated that the referee’s take was spot on.
The replayed game ended 0-0 in Berlin and the shocked Foals – Weisweiler, Heynckes, Netzer et al were out. Not only did they unjustly start the replayed first leg two goals down, due to the 2nd leg (4-2) which was essentially a dead rubber match in the first place, the Foals also missed a penalty, hit the bar, had several legitimate penalty appeals turned down and lost Ludwig Muller to a long-term injuries in that fateful 0-0 draw. The 7-1 result was expunged from the record books and a classic final for the ages denied between the vibrant Foals and the Total Football of Cruyff’s Ajax.
It will always be a regret that this final the Gods decreed – only to have mere mortals decide against it – will only ever be played out in the minds of ageing men and women, and intrigued youngsters who want to learn more. The mind forgets what it never sees.
Thankfully the moment lingers on in a haunting afterlife on YouTube. The first goal: Netzer displaying his renowned vision, threads the ball through to Heynckes who turns his man and slams it into the near post. Too earthy? And the fourth goal? Where the gifted son of a greengrocer softly, delicately, lifts the ball into the top corner from a free kick?
The sixth then? Where Netzer again, starts a move from the edge of his box. By now he is being peremptorily dismissive of the ball. It is revealing to note that during the genesis of the attack, certain Foals players move into space, pass and receive the ball, without actually looking at it. It is football from the gods. But which God was Netzer?
There is a Roman god called Summanus who represented the uncanny and the awe-inspiring – how about him? Netzer actually looks as if he finds the ball’s worship of him tedious, summarily exiling it to an onrushing Heynckes with a glorious push from the outside of his right foot. Yet it is only a temporary banishment. Heynkces runs onto it, knowingly turning his head several times in the belief that it will be time for the sacrifice soon, and eventually squares it. Netzer with nothing better to do than score, simply nudges ahead of the helpless defender – nullifying a man steeped in the dark arts of catenaccio – and executes the ball over the keeper.
He doesn't celebrate this time, he simply lifts his head to the other Gods and their heavenly sovereignty above, merely in order for them to confirm they have seen his offering. This footage makes you weep with joy and wonder. A watching Matt Busby, in attendance that fateful night, shook his head and simply declared, “There is no cure against this Mönchengladbach side”.
You feel like hoarding it for yourself, greedily feasting on it the next time you hear the overhyped strains of Zadok the Priest, but you know there are other believers out there who you need to share the secret with. Seek it out. Borussia Mönchengladbach v Inter Milan. To paraphrase the title of a great cult football book: It is the best football you never saw.
Gladbach proved the original result was no fluke, a mere 72 hours later. A then league leading Schalke 04 team that would go on to finish second in the Bundesliga with fewest goals conceded, came to Mönchengladbach. Their keeper Norbert Nigbur (
) hadn't let in a goal in over 550 minutes and presumably came to regret his pre-match comment of "We're not Inter".
They weren't. Inter had scored, but Schalke lost 7-0. Schalke's vaunted defense was breached after just 4 minutes and thirty minutes later, Nigbur had already conceded five goals – as many goals as he had to concede in the eleven previous games! Netzer reigned supreme and dismantled the Schalke side at will, just as he had toyed with the catenaccio defense of Inter's 3 days earlier. A Schalke team featuring Norbert Nigbur (rated as the best goalkeeper in Bundesliga that season), Klaus Fichtel (rated as the best defender after Beckenbauer), Herbert Lütkebohmert (rated as the 2nd best midfielder after Netzer) and Erwin Kremers (rated as the best forward).
How must it feel to live the rest of your life knowing that your life’s work has already peaked all in the space of one week?
And yet.
EURO 1972
Netzer also played in Germany’s ground-breaking 3-1 victory at Wembley that same year in 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”. Unsurprisingly, the chief architect of England’s overthrow in one of the greatest classics of European International football was Netzer. Sitting deep with Beckenbauer, the players prompted forays, pulling England players out of place, finding time and space with vision and flair.
Many must have wondered just what the Germans were doing when Netzer dropped into defense and Beckenbauer stepped into midfield or why their wide players didn’t just hug their flanks but came inside and dropped back. It was Netzer and Beckenbauer’s blind understanding that was at the heart of Germany’s wonderful performance, the two combining a total of 20 times in the match. Germany were practising the kind of total football that most became familiar with two years later thanks to Johan Cruyff and the Netherlands. But on that day it was Germany that was capturing the imagination of the football world.
“The magnitude of our performance,” said Beckenbauer, “was really just like a dream. I have never shared in a finer West German performance. Everything we wanted to do, we did. The moves, the idea and the execution all happened”. Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Muller, Sepp Maier, Jürgen Grabowski, the young Paul Breitner and Uli Hoeness equalled a litany of greatness. But without Netzer orchestrating, without their Karajan, they were far less than the sum of their parts. It has been argued the day England ceased to be world champions wasn’t in stultifying Monterrey in Mexico in 1970. It was at Wembley in 1972. (You could argue that English football at that level has never really recovered).
As the great Austrian conductor Karajan himself once said: “If you start with almost nothing, people concentrate much more on hearing you. Then when the outbreak comes, it makes a far greater impact.”
Before 1972, West Germany had failed to win on the European stage since their single success in the Miracle of Bern in 1954 aided, as every German knows, by ‘Fritz Walter weather’ – but by God, they made up for it afterwards. Günter Netzer said of that team, “As far as beauty, our football was unique”.
