Season 1978/79: What wonderful stories the Bundesliga writes! In Bielefeld a keeper intentionally lets in a goal and at VfL Bochum they have to get a player from the morning pint. But everything is surpassed by the most famous “duck” in Bundesliga history!
In football there is nothing that does not exist. And so in the 1978/79 season, the Bielefeld keeper Uli Stein intentionally let a ball go into the goal on the first day of the game at MSV Duisburg because he was furious with the careless people in front. His reasoning: “I wanted to show them what it’s like to make a mistake!” By the way, the game ended 1:1 – and Bielefeld was relegated at the end of the season.
Another curious story from this season: VfL Bochum won 3-1 at FC Schalke 04 – with an absolute emergency team. So it was only at the very last moment that Dieter Versen, who had actually already been retired, was found – he was sitting comfortably in a pub with friends. Visibly relieved, VfL trainer Heinz Höher said subtly after the win: “Dieter drank two beers for a pint, not knowing that we might need him again. With the result that he was in the usual shape!”
And BVB was also lively. On the first day of the game in the Westfalenstadion in the Borussia Dortmund game against FC Bayern Munich, a 17-year-old was in goal for the Black and Yellows and made a brilliant save. The next morning, the “Bild” headline was as usual rhyming: “Immel flew into the sky”. And the young Eike was not only ambitious, but quickly showed that he also knew what is important: “Anyone can save the ball, but keep your nerve…” And in fact he and Borussia didn’t always succeed this season. In the end, Dortmund only just managed to keep the class.
The young President Reinhard Rauball was particularly happy about this. Since he had already let Willi “Ente” Lippens move to the Dallas Tornedos in the spring, contrary to the opinion of many admonishers, he not only worried about staying up in the league, but also about his reputation as chairman. Rauball remembers: “It was a sentimental act that you shouldn’t allow yourself to do in this tough Bundesliga business. Woe betide us if we had been relegated. I would have given the rest of my life a wide berth around every duck.”
And that would have been a real shame. Because with Willi “Ente” Lippens, one of the funniest entertainers in the Bundesliga left his show stage this season. Just a short time before, Lippens had said, as usual, pointedly: “The older I get, the bigger my trump card. If it continues like this, in a few years I won’t be able to stop me at all.”
From a young age, Lippens was a true original who always knew who he was playing for: “I saw my best friend in every spectator.” Entertaining the masses was his thing. His former opponent at Werder Bremen, Jürgen Röber, once recalled a story that happened to his teammate Karl-Heinz Kamp: “I will never forget how Willi Lippens pointed out to Kamp from three meters: You’ll get him there! And then he happily pushed the ball through the legs of the unconscious Kalli.”
Frankfurt’s keeper Peter Kunter was also able to tell such a story. “Come on, come on!” Willi Lippens once called out to the Eintracht goalkeeper. After a through ball, the player from Essen was alone in the corner of the penalty area and lured the goalkeeper out of the box. and dr Peter Kunter did him the favor. He ran three or four steps towards the “duck” and had to watch how the “knicker nice up in the long corner” was sunk. It was the goal to 2:1 for Rot-Weiss Essen. Spectacularly achieved. But it was even more interesting: In the end it was 6:3 for RWE, but the Eintracht keeper didn’t really care. He couldn’t be angry with Lippens. Kunter still raves about the agile man from Essen: “He was worth half the Bundesliga!”
The famous story about Lippens and the referee Zuchantke in Herne in May 1965, when Lippens was stopped and warned by the referee with a whistle after a foul game, is often quoted. The man in black said, “I caution you!” And Lippens replied with a big grin on his lips: “Thank you!” The saying became a legend, and in later years the “duck” knew how to market it well. In his restaurant, which he runs in Bottrop together with his son, the waiters still wear this slogan on their gastro clothing.
However, Lippens’ eyes always shone when he talked about another referee great in the Bundesliga. With the Rhenish diplomat Walter Eschweiler, the half-Dutchman from the Ruhr area Lippens always had a lot of fun on the pitch, as he likes to say and lively: “We often talked during the game. Corner kick for us, I’m out to the flag, came he afterwards: ‘Well, Wilhelm, how are things at home?’ Do I say: ‘Thanks, Walter, we’re doing very well. Shall I take the corner now or do you want me to tell you something else?’ Or if you were fouled and were lying on the floor, he would come by – in his way with the tight legs and the smooth ironed upper body – and looked down at you: ‘Young boy, are you looking for something, you have it what’s lost?'” Referee Walter Eschweiler didn’t omit the very personal jokes these days either, as Lippens recalls with a mischievous grin: “He always said to me: ‘I think, Wilhelm, your wife is cheating on us!'”
By the way, Hamburger SV became champions. Coach Branko Zebec and manager Günter Netzer put together a great team that was not always easy to lead. Felix Magath, Manfred Kaltz, Horst Hrubesch and Jimmy Hartwig stood out from this team, but Kevin “Mighty Mouse” Keegan eclipsed them all. In his second season in Hamburg, the Englishman won the hearts of football fans.
At Bayern they finally had a completely different problem at the end of the season. The club’s management wanted Max Merkel as the new coach next season – but the players didn’t want that at all. Goalkeeper Sepp Maier: “Last week, Mr. Neudecker, me and Paul Breitner made a deadline for the club’s general meeting on April 2nd, by then the team could recover from the 4-0 defeat against Bielefeld Everything is already clear to Max Merkel. Yes, where is there such a thing? I played in Braunschweig with a fever of 38 degrees, for our coach Csernai, who has done an excellent job so far. Paul Breitner had lost eight kilos last week after an intestinal flu and Also played. First, Merkel can throw dirt at us for years – then our President will get him. Never!”
The players took a vote at the airport – and everyone voted against Merkel. And what did the prevented new Bayern coach say? Max Merkel, as we know him, reacted calmly: “If not, then it doesn’t matter!” (“If not, it doesn’t matter!”)
(This article was first published on Saturday, October 15, 2022.)
