Friday, July 30, 2021
Li-Bu-Da, Part 1
At the 1970 World Cup, the nucleus of the West German team that would go on to triumph at the 1972 Nations Cup and the 1974 World Cup was in the process of being formed. The great Franz Beckenbauer was there, still in midfield but edging into the "attacking sweeper" role for which he would become renowned. Appearing for the first time at a major tournament, "Der Bomber" Gerd Muller took the Mexican World Cup by storm, scoring 10 close-range goals, many of them spectacular. Sepp Maier had emerged as a world-class goalkeeper. Wolfgang Overath and his brilliant left foot made a significant contribution too, as did the tricky game-breaker Jurgen Grabowski.
But there was only one Mannschaft player at the event who was given the honour of the whole German section of the crowd chanting his name. It happened during the match of his life, the game in which he dazzled crowd and commentators alike, and took the opposition apart. This player was Reinhard Libuda.
Who? I hear you cry.
It was an era of great attacking players, and it is perhaps inevitable that some of them have been largely forgotten. Libuda's story is both instructive and tragic, the tale of a player who was born ten years too late, whose elegant style was slowly becoming obsolete, and whose innocent folk-hero status could not survive a murky scandal.
A miner's son from the Ruhr, with film-star looks and a shy, almost childlike manner, Libuda quickly became an idol with his beloved hometown club Schalke 04. A classical right-winger with superb dribbling skills, he was given the nickname "Stan" for his resemblance to the legendary Stanley Matthews; the "Matthews swerve", that signature drop-of-the-shoulder move named after football's first knight, was one that Libuda executed brilliantly.
Although he came to broader notice in Mexico, Libuda first played for the German national team as far back as 1963 under the aegis of Sepp Herberger, the miracle-worker of Bern whose spell as German Bundestrainer began before the war. But Libuda failed to cement his place in the team.
In 1965, with Schalke finishing in last place in the nascent Bundesliga, Libuda secured a move to local rivals Borussia Dortmund so as to remain at the top level. (Oddly enough, Schalke were not relegated, for obscure reasons.) And it was with Borussia that Libuda collected his first major trophy: the 1966 Cup-Winners' Cup, in which the Dortmunder overcame Bill Shankly's Liverpool in a tight final. It was Libuda who scored the spectacular winning goal, chipping the ball in from 25 yards with a little help from the Liverpool captain Ron Yeats, after the tireless Siggi Held had been stopped in his tracks.
It was the first time that a German club had won a major European title, and with fellow Borussia players Held, Lothar Emmerich and Hans Tilkowski going to the World Cup in England later in the year as first-team players, it came as a surprise to some pundits that German manager Helmut Schoen omitted the 22-year-old Libuda from the squad.
But a closer look at the latter stages of the Cup-Winners' Cup indicates that Schoen, whose attitude to wingers was always somewhat equivocal, may have had his reasons. More in Part 2.
