Tuesday, October 03, 2023
The Hero Who Defected, Part 2
The early 1970s were heady days for East German football. World Cup qualification, a fine performance by the national team at the Munich Olympics, and increasing club success in Europe. Dynamo Dresden had caught the eye by knocking 1973 finalists Juventus out of the 1973/74 European Cup, before going out narrowly to eventual champions Bayern Munich in a wonderfully exciting tie which yielded 13 goals. At the end of the same season, it was the turn of Jürgen Sparwasser's Magdeburg, who became the first club from East Germany to gain a European title with victory in the Cup-Winners' Cup final.
Their opponents, AC Milan, were the defending champions and firm favourites. Still directed from midfield by the elegant Gianni Rivera, they were thought to have too much experience and quality for their opponents, who had enjoyed a relatively easy passage to the final.
But the match, held in Rotterdam's De Kuip stadium, in some ways presaged Italy's - and Rivera's - unimpressive performance at the upcoming World Cup. The Italians found themselves unable to find their rhythm against the hard running and tackling of the fast Magdeburg side, and they conceded an unfortunate own goal late in the first half when Enrico Lanzi deflected young Detlef Raugust's cutback past his own goalkeeper. Milan's attempts to get back into the game thereafter were smothered by the rugged Magdeburg defending, and sixteen minutes from the end, Wolfgang Seguin snuck in cleverly at the back post to score a second.
Sparwasser had an excellent game, combining his typical pace and enthusiasm with intelligence and unselfish teamwork. Near the end, he almost scored a superb goal on the turn, only a fine save from his angled shot preventing the score from becoming embarrassing for the rossoneri.
Sparwasser and his youthful colleague in the Magdeburg forward line, the quick winger Martin Hoffmann, were to have an excellent World Cup too. Starting with a 2-0 win over Australia, with Sparwasser to the fore and Hoffmann making a vital contribution from the bench, they were held 1-1 by Chile in a very lively game in which the European side kept the upper hand for most of the 90 minutes. "How this man [Sparwasser] has grown in his recent appearances for the national team," was the remark of an East German commentator prior to the crunch match against the West Germans. "Enormously!"
Oddly enough, the game which was to make Jürgen Sparwasser famous was, on the whole, not one of his best. Although the East Germans had set out to attack their other group opponents, the manager Georg Buschner wisely pursued a policy of tight man-marking and counter-attack against the feared hosts. As a result, the West Germans dominated the game territorially, and Sparwasser in attack was a peripheral figure. The true heroes of the game for Buschner's side were the tireless fullbacks, Siegmar Wätzlich and Lothar Kurbjuweit, who completely stifled the effectiveness of Jürgen Grabowski and Uli Hoeness respectively.
The West German defence, as the late Rale Rasic observed after their game against Australia, was vulnerable. With Franz Beckenbauer a little too cavalier in his "attacking sweeper" role, Helmut Schoen's team gifted the East Germans a number of chances on the break in the first half. The best of them fell to the midfielder Hans-Jürgen Kreische, who contrived to miss an open goal when Reinhard Lauck hit the byline and pulled the ball back.
The hosts continued to press after the break, but their shots from distance (often the only option against the packed East German defence) were poor, and their key attacking men were being snuffed out by the terrier-like marking of the Easterners. The West German cause was not helped by two bizarre substitutions, Wolfgang Overath making way for a plainly out-of-form Günter Netzer, and Hans-Georg Schwarzenbeck being inexplicably replaced by the veteran defender Horst-Dieter Höttges, a veteran of the 1966 World Cup final. With the East Germans dangerously quick on the breakaway, Höttges was the very last player the West Germans needed on the pitch.
And sure enough, when Sparwasser received the ball in an advanced position some thirteen minutes from the close, he treated Höttges like the proverbial witches' hat before finishing smartly past Sepp Maier. The East Germans had pulled off a famous upset.
There were rumours after the tournament that Sparwasser had been showered with unheard-of rewards by the GDR government following his deciding goal - a house, a car, etc. - but in an interview in the West many years later, he dismissed these claims as nonsense.
The rest of the tournament was to be anti-climactic for the East Germans. Defeat in a tight match against Brazil was followed by a 2-0 loss to the rampant Dutch, and although Buschner's men changed back to an attacking posture for their final, meaningless match against Argentina, they could only manage a 1-1 draw.
In Part 3: Sparwasser's club fortunes following the memorable World Cup appearance - including a return meeting with Beckenbauer, in which Sparwasser did not come off worse.
