There are the most adventurous stories about footballers and superstition. What Andreas Brehme, Berti Vogts or Gerd Müller have done to feel good is really strange. And then there is the story of Stefan Kießling, the top scorer and the frozen pizza.
Footballers and superstition, that’s one thing. World Champion Andreas Brehme needed his wife Pilar’s famous “Mexican Hot Pot” to feel good earlier in the day before each game. Striker Jürgen Wegmann, whom they only called “Kobra” at the time, even took his soccer kicks to bed in the evening: “The shoes are my friends. If I don’t have them close to me, they won’t forgive me and I’ll play badly. ” And with Berti Vogts you could see before kick-off how his mood was. If he cheered, then his Borussia had just lost the pitch: “That’s always a good sign. Because if I lose the pitch, my team usually wins.” Kind of gaga – but if it helps?
In any case, the books of football history are full to bursting with wonderfully curious stories of superstitious professionals. One crazier than the other. The then St. Pauli player Rüdiger Wenzel always had the habit of writing the result on the ball with a pen just before the game: “I always do that – it’s just superstition.” When he once made a mistake in a game against 1. FC Kaiserslautern – he scored a 2-0 win – he said afterwards with a smile: “No wonder. The ball flew into the spectator stands and the fans didn’t move it out anymore. Logically, that we only came to a 1-1.”
The story of Detlef Schößler from Dresden is also great. He never had to come to training in the mornings for evening games. His apology: “I’m just better under floodlights if I don’t train in the morning.” And the Bremen goalkeeper legend Dieter Burdenski was also smitten by the superstition: “Before every game, I always put my right foot on and off the pitch with my right foot. That always included putting my hands on the crossbar before the game – a ritual to be safe and to be balanced. But the superstition is also part of my daily life: I never went out on Thursdays. The most beautiful women could knock on the door there.”
But of course not only the Bundesliga players are superstitious. Even international star players like Bobby Moore had their quirks. His team-mates made a joke of torpedoing the fad of the 1966 English world champions. Moore had a habit of always being the last to put on his pants. To annoy their colleague, his comrades liked to wait until Moore had finished and then rip his pants off himself again. Thereupon Moore took off his pants again and waited again for the penultimate person to be completely dressed. This little game could happily last until right before the game kicked off.
And the great Johan Cruyff was also a man of superstition. He pinched his goalkeeper Gert Bals in the stomach almost compulsively before every game. It was almost more important for Cruyff, however, that he spat his chewing gum into the opponent’s half. He forgot once: It was 1969. When he and Ajax lost 4-1 to AC Milan in the European Cup final.
Interestingly, it’s not uncommon for the strikers to have the biggest quirks in their teams. As the legend Gary Lineker once said, “I never shot at goal in the warm-up because I didn’t want to squander a goal. I wanted to save the goals for the game.” And whenever Gary Lineker didn’t score in the first half, he changed his jersey at the break. Nothing helped and the England international didn’t score a goal for weeks, then he went to the hairdresser. The rule also applied the other way around: Everyone who has immortalized Lineker with a flowing head of hair in their Panini albums knows that.
Of course, one of the greatest strikers of all time, Gerd Müller, also lived the superstition. He once said in 1976: “I always warm up with Uli Hoeneß on the next pitch. Rummenigge was there in the 7-0 loss to Schalke. The first and the last time!” Poor Kale. But in order not to endanger the peace of mind of the “bomber of the nation”, Rummenigge then stayed away from Müller in the game preparation.
The days now, the winner of the top scorer of the 2012/13 season, Stefan Kießling, told a truly curious story from his most successful season, when he scored more goals than any other player in the Bundesliga. First of all, it may have to be said that Rudi Völler once said this about Kießling’s second great passion: “If Stefan hadn’t become a successful Bundesliga professional, he would certainly be a celebrated chef today!” And so it happened that before the home game of the twelfth match day against FC Schalke 04, Kießling was at home alone and didn’t know what to eat. After a look in the freezer, his face lit up. And so, sitting in front of the television set, he ate a frozen pizza with relish, which he – as he once revealed in an interview – as an enthusiastic cook had refined with oregano, onions and rocket. The Bayer striker scored a goal against the Royal Blues the next day.
That would already be the end of the story if Stefan Kießling hadn’t repeated this new ritual on a whim two weeks later before the home game against 1. FC Nürnberg. Of course he scored. And because things were going so well, he put another frozen pizza in the oven before the game at home in the BayArena against Hamburger SV – and this time even scored twice. Today Stefan Kießling says: “The frozen pizza made me a top scorer.” Of course he winks with both eyes at this sentence, because the most successful shooter of the 2012/13 season has a fine sense of humour. As is the case with this sentence, which a journalist once praised without comment as a real “insider tip” from Stefan Kießling: “Remove the plastic wrap to improve the taste of the pizza.”
