Dettmar Cramer: Coach who helped West Germany to World Cup glory and established football in Japan
In 1971, Hirohito presented him with the Order of the Sacred Treasure
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Your support makes all the difference.Dettmar Cramer was a distinguished ambassador for German football, coaching and managing in 90 countries and being personally honoured by Emperor Hirohito for services to Japan. Yet the former paratrooper's most high-profile successes came close to home during the mid-1970s.
In 1974 Cramer assisted West Germany's coach, Helmut Schoen, when the host nation beating the Netherlands in the World Cup final in Munich. The following spring he was in charge of Bayern Munich when a team led by Franz Beckenbauer (who dubbed him "the Football Professor") retained the European Cup by defeating Leeds United in a controversial Paris final.
Despite guiding Bayern to a third consecutive final success, against St-Etienne in 1976, Cramer was ousted. "I told the president we needed some changes," he later recounted. "'That's right,' he replied, 'you're fired'."
Cramer, who has died at the age of 90, served as a senior lieutenant in a paratroop division during the Second World War. Later, he was a midfielder of modest ability, but during the 1948-49 season he came to the notice of Sepp Herberger. The future manager of West Germany's 1954 World Cup winners encouraged him to coach and scout players.
His earliest club roles, with teams such as Teutonia Lippstadt and VfL Geseke, were low-key, and in the early 1960s he left to try sports journalism with TV station ZDF. Missing the interaction with players, he was back within months, and the German FA (DFB) recommended him to their Japanese counterparts.
Japan had never competed in the World Cup. However, in the 1964 Olympic Games, guided by Cramer, they defeated Argentina. A year later he helped establish a national league, and, after returning to assist Schoen at the 1966 World Cup, in which West Germany lost to England in the final, he was centrally contracted to Fifa, the game's world governing body. It sent him back to Japan and at the 1968 Olympics they won the bronze medal.
In 1971, Hirohito presented him with the Order of the Sacred Treasure, while in 2011 he became the first coach to receive the DFB's Lifetime Achievement Award. In between he coached Hertha Berlin, Eintracht Frankfurt, Bayer Leverkusen, Greece's Aris Salonika, Al-Ittihad of Saudi Arabia and the national teams of the US (for two matches before Bayern lured him home in January 1975), Egypt, Thailand, Malaysia and South Korea (Under-23s).
Cramer retired in 2002. Fond of quoting poets and philosophers, he explained his debt to Japan in a recent TV documentary: "First thing I noticed was their gaiety – I'd been told never to smile. I had a foul temper, but they taught me patience."
Dettmar Cramer, football player, coach and manager: born Dortmund, Germany 4 April 1925; married firstly (marriage dissolved), secondly married Anna Marie (one son); died Reit im Winkl, Germany 17 September 2015.
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