Franz Beckenbauer Won the World Cup as Captain, Then as Manager

On 8 July 1990, Franz Beckenbauer stood on the touchline at Rome's Stadio Olimpico and watched West Germany beat Argentina 1-0 in a World Cup final. It was the second time in his life he had seen that exact result from that exact tournament. The first time, 16 years earlier at Munich's Olympiastadion, he hadn't been watching from the touchline at all - he'd been the one wearing the captain's armband, lifting the trophy himself. Between those two nights, Beckenbauer did something almost nobody in the history of the World Cup has managed: he won it once as the man leading the team out, and once again as the man picking the team.

1966 final

Runner-up, as a 20-year-old player

1974 final

Winner, as West Germany's captain

1986 final

Runner-up, as West Germany's manager

1990 final

Winner, as West Germany's manager

Ballon d'Or

1972 and 1976

European Cups won with Bayern Munich

3 straight, 1974-1976

Only one other man has done it the same way

Winning the World Cup as both a player and a manager is already rare. Three men have done it. Brazil's Mario Zagallo was first, a squad player in the 1958 and 1962 wins who then coached the 1970 team built around Pele to the title. Beckenbauer was second, and France's Didier Deschamps became the third when he coached the 2018 winners, 20 years after captaining France to the trophy on home soil in 1998.

But Zagallo's route was different from the other two. He was a squad player in 1958 and 1962, not the captain - that armband belonged to Hilderaldo Bellini. Beckenbauer and Deschamps are the only men to have captained a World Cup-winning team and later managed one to the same result, and Beckenbauer got there first, 24 years before Deschamps followed the same path.

The player who reinvented his own position

Beckenbauer made his World Cup debut in 1966 at 20 years old and finished that tournament on the losing side, England winning 4-2 after extra time at Wembley. He was already playing the position he would make his own: sweeper, the free defender stationed behind the back line, except Beckenbauer refused to just defend from there. He carried the ball forward himself, picked the passes that started attacks, and turned a job that had always been purely defensive into one of the most influential roles on the pitch. West Germany's federation made him captain in 1971, and he led the side to the 1972 European Championship before the bigger prize.

The 1974 final against the Netherlands at the Olympiastadion in Munich went the way of the pinned scoreline: Johan Neeskens converted a penalty inside the first two minutes before West Germany had touched the ball, then Paul Breitner leveled from the spot in the 25th minute and Gerd Muller scored the winner in the 43rd. West Germany held on for a 2-1 win, and Beckenbauer lifted a trophy that had never been lifted before - 1974 was the first tournament to use the current FIFA World Cup Trophy, the golden design that replaced the Jules Rimet Trophy after Brazil kept the original permanently in 1970. Every World Cup winner since has lifted the same physical piece of gold. Beckenbauer's team was the first.

Teamchef: the manager who wasn't even a licensed coach

Beckenbauer's route back to a World Cup final ran through an unlikely job title. When the German federation approached him in 1984 after Jupp Derwall's resignation, Beckenbauer didn't hold a coaching license, so he couldn't legally be appointed Bundestrainer - the standard title for the national coach. Instead he took the job as Teamchef, team manager, with a licensed assistant, first Horst Koppel and then Berti Vogts, formally responsible for the parts of the role German football regulations required a qualified coach to sign off on. What Beckenbauer brought instead was authority built over a playing career nobody in the squad could argue with.

The team was fully behind him. He was an absolute strategist and always knew how to help us.

Lothar Matthaus, on playing under Beckenbauer, franzbeckenbauer.de

His first tournament in charge produced a runner-up finish, West Germany losing the 1986 final 3-2 to a Diego Maradona-inspired Argentina. Four years later the same two countries met again in the final, this time in Rome, and this time West Germany won it: Andreas Brehme scored the only goal from the penalty spot in the 85th minute, after Argentina had already had Pedro Monzon sent off and would lose Gustavo Dezotti to a second red card before the final whistle. West Germany's 1-0 win completed the double. Sixteen years after lifting the trophy as a player, Beckenbauer lifted it again as a manager - the first man in World Cup history to do both as captain.

Why the double almost never happens

It's worth being specific about why this is rare rather than just calling it rare. Winning a World Cup as captain requires being one of the best players of a generation, good enough and respected enough that a federation hands you the armband on the biggest stage there is. Winning one as a manager requires a completely different skill: reading a squad that isn't yours to command by talent alone, building a staff, surviving a bad tournament or two along the way. Most of the game's great captains never manage at the top level at all, and most of the coaches who do win World Cups were never elite players themselves - Zagallo is the exception there too, and even he wasn't the captain. Beckenbauer and Deschamps are the only two men who cleared both bars from the same starting point: armband first, touchline second.

When Beckenbauer died in January 2024, Bayern Munich's honorary president Uli Hoeness put the range of what he'd done in one line.

Franz Beckenbauer is the greatest personality FC Bayern has ever had. As a player, coach, president, person: unforgettable.

Uli Hoeness, quoted by ESPN, January 2024

On Sunday, one of two captains at MetLife Stadium will lift the World Cup - either Lionel Messi's Argentina defending the title they won in 2022, or a Spain side back in a final for the first time since 2010. Whoever it is, the odds against them ever standing on a touchline 20 years from now, watching a team they built win the same trophy, are extraordinarily long. Only two men have ever done it. Beckenbauer got there first, and the game that launches the moment this final ends is, in its own small way, built on the idea that a World Cup final is always worth watching for what happens after the final whistle too - the walk to lift the trophy, or the walk alone across the pitch that Beckenbauer took in Rome in 1990, medal around his neck, saying almost nothing while his players celebrated around him.