Hans Meyer is without a doubt one of the most popular coaches in Bundesliga history. His inimitable, mischievous way of defusing even tricky situations with wonderfully original sayings has always earned him a lot of sympathy. Today Hans Meyer celebrates his 80th birthday!
“I still can’t get over the fact that we lost the European Cup final in Düsseldorf back then, but luckily they’re tearing down the Rheinstadion now.” That’s one of those typical sayings from Hans Meyer – who started his coaching career in the days of the GDR. When he returned to Düsseldorf with a club many years later, he thought back to the unhappy memories of 1981, when his team Carl Zeiss Jena lost to Dinamo Tbilisi in the final.
In the same season, his club also appeared in European competitions at Benfica Lisbon. Back then, Hans Meyer got hold of a couple of Portuguese newspapers that contained articles about Carl Zeiss Jena: “Then I pretended to have translated them: ‘The robots from the East can run, but they’re blind when it comes to football. Who Growing up in a system like that, you can’t develop creativity.’ Stuff like that. None of that really mattered, but it was a nice extra motivation. We won and we were in the European Cup final.”
It was a great time back then in Jena. In retrospect, however, he would rather forget his coaching position at Rot-Weiss Erfurt: “The footballers in Jena always played dice or cards. In Erfurt I come into the dining room, twelve players are playing chess. They were too smart for football.” The Jena fans also took offense at his move to Erfurt. They demolished his Wartburg and painted slogans like “Meyer, you’re going to die” all over him. When a journalist wanted to know how you could tell that it was his vehicle, Meyer replied: “I wrote on it at the time: ‘I’m Hans’ car’.”
After the turn, Meyer returned to Portugal with a team. Training camp in the sun. Standing under an orange tree, he smiled at his players: “Forty years no tropical fruits – and now this!” The new life took some getting used to: “The professional business is tough, and the transformation of GDR sport happens like in the economy. But fortunately we don’t have a Treufussanstalt!”
After three years in the Netherlands with Twente Enschede, Meyer moved to Borussia Mönchengladbach in 1999. Finally arrived in the Bundesliga – if only in the second. But the conditions that Meyer found were anything but first-class anyway: “Our training ground was so far out – when you got there, you first had to chase the wolves away with a few sticks!” At that time, Meyer said the beautiful sentence: “I’m just a passer-by who accompanies the club a bit.”
When the successes came, the press wanted to know why things were going so well at Borussia at the moment. Meyer replied: “The players have not been afraid of me for three or four weeks.” He extended his contract and announced afterwards: “We had to stop training because some players burst into tears.”
He enjoyed his new life and didn’t forget how good it was for him and his professionals in the oasis of well-being: “The players come in at nine in the morning, drink coffee, have a chat, then a small team meeting, 90 minutes of training, an hour of follow-up . And in the afternoon they go to Düsseldorf with their mum. They can go shopping while others are still at the machine. As a football professional you have a wonderful time.”
During these years, Hans Meyer rose to become a ‘cult coach’. The Gladbach supporters celebrated the joint successes, but even more the original sayings of their coach. At the press conference after a game in Hamburg, Meyer thanked the support in his own way: “I find it remarkable that 3,000 of our fans were in St. Pauli, and of those at most 2,000 were there because of the Reeperbahn.”
The media learned to love Meyer during this time, even if there was always friction with the tabloids. When these escalated, Meyer preferred to play it safe: “I have a dentist appointment, I’ll get new teeth, I won’t be in training, so don’t write that I’m fired.” He openly criticized journalists who annoyed him with standard questions from the press kit: “Imagine you are a coach, have won a game and are asked: Mr. Schäfer, what is going on in your mind now? Honestly, you should but say you are contemplating strangling him.”
Nevertheless, he loved playing with the media. After a 1-0 win against Bayern Munich in the first game of the season, he said: “If I’m in secure midfield with the system for Christmas, then we can talk about it. But after a matchday I’ll be careful not to put my head out of the window so much . But if you write that Hans Meyer won all by himself, then you are of course right.”
Meyer celebrated the day in his own way: “Now I’ll go home and open a bottle of the six-mark sparkling wine. We’re poor people and buy from Aldi.” The problem wasn’t actually the money, but something else: “If I drank a whole bottle of Little Red Riding Hood, my wife would regularly get pregnant afterwards.”
In another game against the big Bavarians, Meyer was asked whether a point was the best Christmas present for Munich: “I can’t say that now. Otherwise I’ll have problems when my wife arrives with the package of fine-rib underwear on Christmas Eve .” Meyer also thought of the wives of his pros, but that didn’t always go well: “I tried to save six player marriages. There is still one. The other five wanted to kill me because I prolonged the misery.”
After the 2008/2009 season, Hans Meyer ended his career as a coach – a well-considered step: “If you play football, then the job will no longer let you free. You’re socially uprooted a bit. Go to the theater in the evening if you’ve lost three times You’re a mood fright.” In retrospect, the step to retire at 66 came almost too late for him. But he could only know that afterwards: “I quit when I actually had a year’s contract left. Then I made a trip around the world and took a ship from Tahiti to French Polynesia. Not a luxury liner on which everyone already have the death certificate in your pocket, but a completely normal supply ship. In my cabin I looked in the mirror and asked myself: man, Hans, why not sooner?”
Even as a pensioner, Meyer hasn’t lost his sense of humor. When rumors surfaced in 2011 that he would take over another club, Meyer replied in his typical way: “I’ll only return to the coaching bench if FC Barcelona calls and Otto Rehhagel lets me in.” To date, this has not happened. For his fans, however, Hans Meyer is still approachable – except for one thing, as he once said in his wonderfully humorous way: “You know, you can always disturb me during sexual intercourse, but when it comes to eating, it just sucks!”
And his inimitable talent for defusing even the most tricky situation with a fine bon mot was finally publicly acknowledged and honored in 2007. The “German Academy for Football Culture” awarded him the “Football Saying of the Year”. Totally deserved. Because this saying is for eternity: “With nice regularity, football is always the same.” Today Hans Meyer celebrates his 80th birthday. All the best and good luck, dear Hans Meyer!
