I cherish fond memories of 'Football Made in Germany'

Karl-Heinz Ruminegge (second, left) was part of Germany’s squad that finished runners-up in the 1982 and 1986 Fifa World Cup. PHOTO | COURTESY |

What you need to know:

  • I believe its popularity stemmed from the country’s spectacular victory of the Fifa World Cup on home soil after beating hot favourites Holland in 1974, this set the stage for Germany’s cultural outreach to the world

In the 1970s, apart from buying a bed, a two-burner gas cooker, two sufurias and sets of not more than four cups and plates and spoons, the signature act of arrival into membership of the working class was acquiring a Sanyo black-and-white television set.

Its gleaming knobs had a magnetic effect on eyes that couldn’t have enough of them as you waited for Voice of Kenya (VoK) to open station at 5pm.

And even if the twin aerials were not needed before then, you still deployed them to form a magnificent V-shape that seemed to denote the ultimate victory.

Needless to say, there had to be a nice coffee table to place it on and a fashionable, white woven cloth to protect it from dust.

With my eyes on the prize, I worked hard and saved diligently to afford one. I sought the advice of knowledgeable friends for the best deal. Luckily, I found one with whom I couldn’t go wrong, my own colleague and cricket correspondent Zoeb Tayebjee.

He walked with me in brotherly solidarity throughout the months I worked to save the money. When I was ready, I contacted him and because he had a car, he personally delivered the Sanyo to my flat in Kariobangi South. What an achievement, what a milestone!

The months before that purchase were hard. Life was passing me by and my suffering was immense. By life, I mean especially two weekly programmes – Football Made in Germany and Derrick.

Derrick was a crime series starring Horst Tappert as Detective Chief Inspector Stephan Derrick, and Fritz Wepper as Inspector Harry Klein, his diligent assistant. (“Harry, bring around the car.”) I won’t say more because Derrick doesn’t belong to these pages suffice to make a wish in passing that Kenya Police take in just half a percent of the professionalism depicted there and the mirage we call police reforms would become reality.

Because of a project I am working on, I have found myself constantly remembering Football Made in Germany and the impact it had on my own professional career.

Kenya’s craze with the English Premier League is probably at its peak and I never cease being amazed at how even the most nondescript bars in our rural towns have become its shrines of worship. It is stunning just how much young folk in this country’s towns know about the clubs that play in the EPL, especially the top 10.

I believe the genesis of Football Made in Germany was that country’s spectacular but unexpected win of the 1974 Fifa World Cup on home soil.

Holland, with superstars Johan Cruyff and Johan Neekens and showcasing an exotic brand of the game called “total football” (all attack, all defend), were red hot favourites for the title. And their first-minute penalty in the final seemed to confirm that this was an inevitability.

The late legendary Dutch former football player tJohan Cruyff at the Uefa 2013/2014 Champions League group stage draw. PHOTO | FILE | AFP

GREAT COMEBACK

But a resilient Germany, with captain Franz Beckenbauer “The Kaiser”, goalkeeper Sepp Maier, and striker Gerd Muller, had other ideas, of course. They pulled off a stunning win and Holland, fated to endure a similar outcome four years later in Argentina, remains one of the greatest footballing nations never to win the World Cup.

Franz Beckenbauer captained Germany in their 1974 World Cup win. PHOTO | COURTESY |

Gerd Muller (right) is one of Germany’s greatest strikers of all time. PHOTO | COURTESY |

Klaus Fischer (centre) was one of the top scorers in the Germany league. PHOTO | COURTESY |

The 1974 victory set the stage for Germany’s cultural outreach to the world and two years later, there was Soccer Made in Germany in the United States and Football Made in Germany in Kenya. Both were one and the same thing but the Americans had to make a distinction between their version and what the rest of the world knows as the beautiful game.

Altogether, 256 Public Broadcasting Service member stations aired the programme made available to them by the German Educational Television Network.

And so this is how we came to be glued to our Sanyo television sets every weekend without fail. It may come as a surprise to today’s EPL fanatics, but we could reel off the names of players from Bayern Munich, Borussia Dortmund, FC Schalke 04, SV Werder Bremen and VfB Stuttgart with ease. In fact, many people could even pronounce Borussia Monchengladbach as if it was their own surname.

What I regret most about this era is that in the course of moving house, I lost a notebook I diligently kept about the most outstanding phrases to come out of the commentary of Toby Charles, the show’s host. The loss of that notebook taught me something about priceless items that once lost cannot be recovered. Toby Charles is the greatest football commentator that I have ever listened to. I doubt I’ll ever hear his equal.

“Hi, this is Toby Charles saying welcome from Dortmund…” or wherever else he was broadcasting from and after a brief chat that made you feel as if he was talking to you personally, he would move on to “straightaway, let me give you the names of the teams..” and you adjusted yourself in the sofa for truly pleasurable feast. As a reporter, I would use some of his phrases in my reports such as the dramatic but untrue situation where the ball smashes “the woodwork”. Goalposts, of course, are not made of wood.

On a couple of occasions, I ran into trouble with some strikers off the pitch after, like Toby Charles, I reported that “it was easier to score that ball than to miss” and earned approving smiles when observing that “only somebody with the acrobatic skills of (Hesbon Omollo) could make something out of that cross.”

One of the reasons that Toby Charles kept us riveted to the screen was the enormous volume of information that he gave us about the players. Once a goal was scored, he straightaway told you the new season tally for the scorer. His commentaries were interspersed with juicy titbits and I took notes as if I was in the stadium covering a match.

Such information is obviously the result of an efficient research team back-up. I noticed that our own Topi Liyambila at the now renamed Kenya Broadcasting Corporation tried, with admirable effort, to raise the level of football commentary in English but he didn’t get far.

My guess is that he ran into an impregnable bureaucratic wall branded “when funds are available.” Football Made in Germany gave us heroes – and not just in Kenya but across Africa as well. The standout African goalkeeper of the last century, Cameroon’s Thomas N’Kono, always wore a black track suit in tribute to his idol, Sepp Maier.

Today, there is a generation of Kenyans to whom the names Paul Breitner, Uli Hoeness, Karl-Heinz Ruminegge, Klaus Fisher, Berti Vogts, and Rainer Bonhoff, in addition to others that could fill up a few volumes, means the world.

Kenya’s economic and cultural ties with England have their roots in the century-long colonial period. Yet history shows that in so far as football is concerned, Germany has had a far bigger influence on us than Britain. In almost similar terms, two players who have turned out for Harambee Stars for more than 10 years, AFC Leopards’ Aggrey Lukoye and Gor Mahia’s Allan Thigo, have told me that German coaches made a comprehensive philosophical and tactical transformation of our game.

In the case of Thigo, it was Eckhardt Krautzun who qualified the country for its first Africa Nations Cup in 1972 while for Lukoye, it was Bernhardt Zgoll, who established youth development centres across the country. There was also Reinhardt Fabisch, who won the All Africa Games silver medal in 1987.

“Before Krautzun came,” Thigo told me, “We had never heard of somebody called a goalkeeping coach. We had also never heard of player formations, such as 4-4-2 or 4-3-3. We just took the field and chased after the ball.”

Former Harambee Stars coach, the late Reinhardt Fabisch, at the 2006 Africa Cup of Nations finals in Ghana where he coached Benin. PHOTO | FILE

Lukoye said: “German coaches brought system to our game. They brought organisation, both on and off the field. Although they never let him finish his work, Zgoll established a succession system between the age groups which promised to continually feed Harambee Stars with well-prepared youths. For not following through on his work, Kenya has never stopped performing below its potential.”

My precious Sanyo black-and-white TV lived long. It even survived a house burglary in which I lost a prized stereo system. (The Makadara Police Station officer who responded to my distress call – landline number 999, mark you! – was an Inspector in the mould of Derrick – polite, friendly, concerned and articulate: the quintessential professional.

He nabbed the culprits. His name was Lazaro Muli. He later left the police and became a pilot. He was the co-pilot of the ill-fated KQ 431 that crashed in Cote d’Ivoire in 2000 killing him and 168 others).

My notebook did not survive house moving. But my memories of Football Made in Germany and the peerless commentary of Toby Charles will last me the rest of my life.