Franz Beckenbauer

Franz Beckenbauer began as a youth centre-forward and made his Bayern debut on the left wing in 1964, yet he is remembered as the defender who turned the sweeper into an attacking threat. Known as der Kaiser, the Emperor, he is often credited with inventing the modern libero: a defender with licence to join the attack instead of simply guarding the space behind his back line. Before he settled at the back, he was a midfielder. At the 1966 and 1970 World Cups he partnered Wolfgang Overath in midfield, and the goals came with it. He scored four times at the 1966 tournament, two of them on his World Cup debut against Switzerland, and was named its best young player. In the Wembley final he and Bobby Charlton were each told to mark the other, and the pair largely cancelled each other out. Four years later England led the rematch by two goals until his spectacular strike started the West German recovery that ended in an extra-time win. He began trying out the sweeper role at Bayern around the time he became captain for the 1968–69 season, which ended with Bayern's first Bundesliga title. What set his version apart was what happened after he won the ball. Rather than hoofing it clear, he looked to start attacks himself, relying on the range of his passing and his technique to run the game from deep. A favourite trick was the one-two: he would lay the ball off to a teammate, slip past his man and collect the return on the other side. Bayern went on to win three straight league titles from 1972 and three straight European Cups from 1974, and he lifted all three of those European Cups as captain. Two stories show the calm and the toughness. One account of the Kaiser nickname goes back to the 1969 cup final, when, after fouling Schalke's Reinhard Libuda and hearing the crowd turn on him, he took the ball towards those fans and kept it balanced in front of them for half a minute. In the 1970 World Cup semi-final with Italy, he dislocated his shoulder after a foul and carried on with his arm in a sling, as both substitutes were already used. Captain of his country from 1971, he won the 1972 European Championship and the 1974 World Cup at home, where he and the other defenders kept such close watch on Johan Cruyff that the Dutch never quite got their Total Football going. He remains the only defender to have won the Ballon d'Or twice, and he was never sent off in his Bayern years, which fits his reputation for fair play and leadership. Cruyff named him at centre-back in his favourite World XI, and La Gazzetta dello Sport, writing after he died in 2024, called him the "greatest defender ever".