Special Moments
In his practice near Munich's Marienplatz, FC Bayern club doctor Dr. Hans-Wilhelm Müller-Wohlfahrt receives an unexpected visitor one summer's day in 2013. At his door stands Jupp Heynckes, 68, former coach of FC Bayern München. Before retiring, the veteran manager had achieved something historic with Bayern — the Treble of German championship, DFB-Pokal and Champions League.
A grand gesture from a man who had shown he could change. Who seemed to have matured like fine wine. From the coaching novice with his clumsy rhetoric to the nearly unemployable job-hopper already branded a "coach of the old school" by Rudi Assauer in 2004 — and finally to the Triple-winning sage. But to understand the transformation, one has to go back to Frankfurt.
Of all places, Frankfurt! Nowhere did "Don Jupp" suffer a greater debacle than at the once-high-flying Hessian club. Nowhere in his career did the Rhinelander make himself more unpopular than at the Frankfurt Stadtwald. At no other club did his stubbornness leave more scorched earth than in the metropolis on the Main.
The Heynckes that Frankfurt's strict tabloid press and spoiled fans encountered at his appointment in July 1994 bore little resemblance to the relaxed coaching fox of his later years. Heynckes came across as pedantic, impervious to advice and aloof. "When I start here on July 7, the clocks will tick differently," he announced at his presentation. A promise that would come back to haunt him.
A slip of the tongue that would cost him dearly. At FC Bayern München in the spring of 1990, after winning the German championship, he had already allowed himself a rash promise. "I promise you," he called out to the Bayern fans at Marienplatz, "that we'll win the European Cup next year." The Bayern stars around Klaus Augenthaler shrugged — and in the end, Heynckes was sacked before he could fulfil the pledge.
Before long, Eintracht vice-president Bernd Hölzenbein brought his former international teammate Jupp Heynckes — with whom he had played eleven times for Germany — back to the Bundesliga. Eintracht Frankfurt had endured a turbulent season. The ambitious Hessian club had collapsed spectacularly after being "autumn champions" in 1993, crashing out of the UEFA Cup quarter-finals.
The notion of "calm within the club" would be shelved quickly. "This," SAT.1's RAN programme later summarised in characteristically florid style, "made even seven turbulent years under Stein look like eternal peace." But it was not just Heynckes's threat about the clocks ticking differently. "I haven't come here to finish fourth or fifth," Heynckes declared — raising expectations to breaking point.
The start was miserable. 0-0 against Köln, 1-1 at Kaiserslautern, and on matchday 3, Bayer Leverkusen with old stars Bernd Schuster and Rudi Völler blew Eintracht away 4-0. One detail stood out even in this match: Anthony Yeboah, the reigning Bundesliga top scorer, was not in the squad. Something between the proud Ghanaian striker and the authoritarian coach had broken irreparably.
"I'm gone from Frankfurt and now he can show what a world-class coach he is," Gaudino fired one last parting shot at Heynckes from Manchester. By then it was too late. On April 2, 1995, after a 0-3 defeat to Schalke and 13th place in the Bundesliga, Heynckes's time in Frankfurt was up. He brought his wife Iris to Frankfurt to draft his official farewell statement. "For me it is deeply painful" — but the damage was done.
For Eintracht, the appointment of Jupp Heynckes was a "very special moment" indeed. It marked the end of all championship ambitions and the beginning of a phase in which the club became a yo-yo team, fighting for its sporting and financial survival. Sometimes the fit simply isn't right.
32. Außer vielleicht in Mönchengladbach im Jahr 2007.↩