Beckenbauer: a career marked by titles

Franz Beckenbauer was a world champion as both a player and head coach, a European champion, a twice European and four-time Germany Footballer of the Year – and that’s just a snippet of the long list of the Kaiser’s achievements. DFB.de has assembled a list of facts and statistics covering the gleaming international career of the German national team’s honorary captain, who died last Sunday at the age of 78.

Beckenbauer’s career as an international player

• 103 international caps, placing him twelfth in Germany’s all-time list
• One of 13 male players so far to have won more than 100 Germany caps
• He started all 103 matches. Franz Beckenbauer, Philipp Lahm (113 starts in 113 caps) and Jürgen Kohler (105 starts in 105 caps) are the only players with at least 70 caps to have started every game.
• He led the national team out as captain in 50 of these games
• 14 goals, 20 assists and 34 goal involvements
• 69 wins (67 percent) making him the player with the ninth-most international victories
• 18 draws (17 percent)
• 16 defeats (16 percent)
• One yellow card, no reds
• 1974 World Cup winner (as captain)
• 1972 EUROs winner (as captain)
• European Footballer of the Year 1972 and 1976
• Germany Footballer of the Year 1966, 1968, 1974 and 1976
• Germany Footballer of the Century 2000
• Goal of the Month in February 1972 and March 1974
• Best young player of the 1966 World Cup
• Honorary captain of the German national team
• Named in the FIFA World Team of the 20th Century
• Voted third in the World Footballer of the 20th Century
• ‘Sportsman of the century’ at the Bavarian Sports Awards 2018
• Included in the first eleven of the German football Hall of Fame at the German Football Museum in 2018
• Competed in three World Cups (1966, 1970, 1974), with 18 games, five goals and one assist
• Competed in three European Championships (1972, 1976)
• First international cap in the 2-1 win over Sweden in Solna on 26th September 1965
• Last international cap in the 1-0 loss to France in Paris on 23rd February 1977

Beckenbauer’s career as Germany’s head coach

• 66 games
• 36 wins (55 percent)
• 17 draws (26 percent)
• 13 defeats (19 percent)
• 1990 World Cup winner
• 1986 World Cup runner-up
• First game in the 3-1 defeat to Argentina in Düsseldorf on 12th September 1984
• Last game in the 1-0 World Cup Final win over Argentina in Rome on 9th July 1990
• Beckenbauer was directly involved in a total of 169 international matches (103 as a player and 66 as head coach). Only Joachim Löw (198, all as head coach) and Berti Vogts (198, 96 as a player and 102 as head coach) have been involved more often.