They have known each other for 55 years, celebrated great successes in the FC Bayern and DFB jerseys, and were inseparable in spirit. Until August 2021, however, Uli Hoeneß and Paul Breitner were also considered to be great disputants. Breitner’s open letter on Hoeneß’s 70th birthday provides further insight.
The reconciliation between Uli Hoeneß and Paul Breitner took place at Gerd Müller’s funeral service last August. “Now we have behaved for decades in a way that not even small children would,” Breitner said last summer. The two exceptional players had also come closer again through the mediation of Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, and at the end of the reconciliation talk the two would even have embraced each other.
A cordiality that had been part of everyday life for the two for many years and at the same time was no longer thought possible, for the two opinionated Bayern giants quarrelled publicly at least twice. After these quarrels, an icy radio silence marked their (non)relationship.
Emotional details of their long journey together can be gleaned from the congratulatory letter Breitner wrote to Hoeneß, which was published in the current members’ magazine “51”.
Open letter from Paul Breitner to Uli Hoeneß
Dear Uli,
We met in October 1966 at the training course for the South German youth team in Karlsruhe. When the double rooms were allocated, we, I just 15 years old, you still 14, happened to be standing next to each other – and became inseparable. For years we shared the room, I always took the train from Freilassing via Munich to Ulm, where you got on, and stayed with you for a few hours on the return journey until the last train.
We understood each other right away because, despite our fundamentally different interests and partly contrary views, we are like identical twins when it comes to central values such as will, commitment and diligence. Our magnet was mutual respect: we knew that we could rely on each other 100 per cent, both on the pitch and in life. Due to our environment, we both grew up early – you had to help in your butcher’s shop, I managed my everyday life with two full-time working parents independently even as a child. It was only logical that we formed a shared flat when we moved to FC Bayern in 1970. By then we were like an old married couple and knew what made each other tick.
As a professional, you once had the habit for a few months of taking a body scale with you everywhere and standing on it ten times a day. I’ll never forget how, in March 1973, before the European Cup quarter-final against Ajax Amsterdam, we were ready to leave and you tore off your clothes, weighed yourself and beamed: “Paul, I’ve got a great feeling about today! We lost 0:4. After returning to the hotel, I said to you: “Either you throw this scale out of the window right now, or I’ll do it!” That was the end of the matter.
We were so closely connected in thought that we also made important phone calls to each other, negotiated and made decisions. Like before the 1974 World Cup, when you agreed with a publisher that the two of us would publish a book together. Your sales argument: we would sign every copy personally. I thought to myself: Let’s sign a few thousand copies. In the end, there were exactly 307,500 books. Months after the World Cup, I was still getting stacks of the insert sheets sent to Madrid.
Our contact never broke off during my three years in Spain, on the contrary: we visited each other every few weeks. You absorbed my experiences at Real, which already had over 600 employees at that time, like a sponge. During that time, the idea grew to turn FC Bayern into a second Real Madrid, a global club – that was our common dream.
All those years there was not one bad word; the first big argument we had was in January 1983 when you were manager and I decided to quit at the end of the season. You couldn’t understand why I ended my career at just 31, at my zenith – because you yourself were forced to quit at 27. “Play as long as you can. It’s the best time of your life,” you always preached to your players. Yet your fate was the great fortune for FC Bayern: You left your mark on the club like only Gerd Müller did with his goals. And for me, too, this dispute was groundbreaking at the time. In retrospect, I am infinitely grateful to you, because otherwise I would probably have embarked on a career as an official, which would have counteracted my early career end – after all, I wanted to be free of football.
The fact that I sometimes publicly attacked you and FC Bayern was due to the fact that both you and the club were always important to me – and still are today. I criticised some decisions because I was the only one who dared to counter you. I wanted to draw attention to things for the good of FC Bayern. If I hadn’t cared, I wouldn’t have bothered at all.
Dear Uli, I am glad that we both came to our senses and woke up: It would have been bad if we couldn’t enjoy our journey together even now.
For your birthday, I wish you a brilliant idea for your personal wish that you, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and I can once again achieve something great together. And since I was always a few months ahead of you in terms of age, I can assure you: Even the 70th doesn’t hurt.
