1979/80 season: In July 1979, Bayern goalkeeper Sepp Maier was seriously injured in a car accident. He is immediately taken to a clinic. But it was only with the help of his former teammate and current manager Uli Hoeneß that the correct, life-sustaining diagnosis was made!
It was the night of July 14, 1979 when Sepp Maier only had seven kilometers to go to his home. But then the FC Bayern Munich keeper lost control of his 6.9 liter Mercedes on the rain-soaked road on the way back from a friendly match in Ulm. The rear turned and the car slid down the road on the film of water. aquaplaning Maier no longer had a chance to steer his car.
Sepp Maier’s life hung by a thread in the first few hours after the accident. The doctors initially only assumed a few broken ribs and bones – but when Uli Hoeneß was standing at the Bayern keeper’s hospital bed with a professor friend the next afternoon, they quickly realized that that couldn’t have been all. Without hesitation, they arranged for Sepp Maier to be transferred to another hospital.
And there it was discovered that a tear in the diaphragm had caused the liver to move into the lung. More than two liters of blood had already collected in the abdominal cavity. The goalkeeper’s situation was life-threatening. A major operation lasting several hours was scheduled that night. Only weeks later was Sepp Maier allowed to leave the hospital. He is still grateful to Uli Hoeneß for coming and for his quick, uncompromising help – which in all likelihood saved his life.
However, all attempts to return to the Bundesliga failed. And so the Bundesliga bid farewell to one of its big stars at the end of the season. Now, however, unfortunately quite differently than he had always wished for. Sepp Maier actually wanted to resign like this: “I only stop when Franz and Gerd can no longer push me onto the seat in a wheelchair.” But then his serious accident intervened – and nothing was like it used to be.
And Franz and Gerd haven’t played for Bayern for a long time either. When saying goodbye, the great goalkeeper and wonderful entertainer Sepp Maier spoke moving words: “Football, that was my world, my big world! Finally, when I was just sitting in the stands when the floodlights went on, I first felt what football really means to me. Every time I played it gave me goosebumps. Before, when I was really involved in the game, I never realized what an atmosphere it was!” Now it was over, after 473 games, Sepp Maier said goodbye to the Bundesliga. And he knew the timing was right. Because the crazy goalkeeper also thought about his sporting future when he said goodbye: “I want to continue playing tennis after football without any problems!”
At the end of his unique career, Sepp Maier accepted the trophy for the German championship with FC Bayern after an exciting and hard-fought season. After matchday 32, the reigning German champions, Hamburger SV, and FC Bayern Munich were tied at the top. Both had a goal difference of plus 48. HSV only led the table because they scored two goals more than Bayern. But then the Hamburgers lost surprisingly, but quite quietly and above all defenselessly on the penultimate match day at promoted Bayer Leverkusen 1:2. The Munich team, on the other hand, won their game against third-placed VfB Stuttgart convincingly 3-1 and became German champions for the sixth time – Bayern have won five titles since the Bundesliga was founded.
After Bayern’s masterpiece on Matchday 33 in Stuttgart, Kalle Rummenigge demanded loudly in the dressing room: “Where’s the champagne? Like Niki Lauda’s!” The mood was exuberant. Again Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, exuberant with the feelings of winning the title: “We have always been for the Pál system!” However, the FC Bayern goalscorer did not mean the new television set in the club bus, but the game system of his coach Pál Csernai.
The Hungarian trainer of the new German champions was praised by many experts because, in addition to establishing his area coverage system, he had also managed to end the clique economy within the team and to form a homogeneous team from eleven small stars. Lästermaul Max Merkel, who himself would have liked to sit on the trainer’s bench in the Olympic Stadium, still complained: “There’s a coach at FC Bayern who lets the left (Oblak) play on the right and the right (Dürnberger) on the left. That’s real Hungarian cucumber-salami-paprika mixed salad à la Csernai.”
But in the meantime the league had already gotten used to the fact that the successful football coach Max Merkel had become the columnist Merkel. And in “Playboy” he made a sweeping attack. No one in the football scene was safe from his perky snout. Merkel, on the other hand, was full of praise for the BVB fans: “The crowd intoxicates you so much in the Westfalenstadion, you can almost get an orgasm from the applause.”
And about the Bundesliga in general, he said: “She’s 17 and hits on seven million men every year. But she doesn’t have the right men herself. Maybe it’s because she looks pretty old despite her youth. The maid’s name is Bundesliga and performs in 18 houses in the republic, topless and bottom weaker than ever. She doesn’t bang as nicely as before, when the Germans were still European and world champions.”
