Franz grew up in Munich in the post-war years. The family could not afford a leather ball or soccer shoes. Franz therefore had to pursue his passion with balls of wool and in converted ski boots.
Young Franz grew up in a modest Giesinger neighborhood, where the Beckenbauer family lived together with several generations under one roof. The apartment was small, the conditions were simple, but there was no need. Franz was a tender boy, often still slender and with poor circulation, but he learned early on to balance his physical inferiority with skill and the joy of movement.
A special moment marked his childhood when he stood in a wooden shack cheered on the returning soccer world champions. It was clear to him that soccer was his world.
His mother encouraged Franz in everything he wanted to do, even though his father had little to do with soccer at first. And so the meadow on the SC München 06 sports ground in front of the front door became Franz's second home. There he kicked first with a ball of wool, later with a genuine leather ball, which he saved with his friends by carrying out newspapers and collecting waste paper.
Franz often played barefoot at first and therefore often had bloody toes. As he later explained in interviews, he learned how to handle the ball more naturally than with soccer shoes and thus developed a special technique.
His first team was called “Bowazu”, an abbreviation for the residents of the streets around the soccer field: Bonifatiusstraße, Watzmannstraße and Zugspitzstraße. He was used for the first time at the age of five and immediately showed his talent: confident and agile. Despite his age, Franz was soon better than all the other players.
At the age of eight, Franz joined his first official club, SC München 06. However, when the club got into trouble four years later, they were forced to look for a new team.
There were two clubs up for election: the most successful club in town at the time, TSV 1860, and the still small, less successful FC Bayern. It was actually clear to Franz that he would switch to 1860. But shortly before the change, a player from the “lions” gave him a waddle. This humiliation was so profound that Franz made one of the most important decisions of his life: He would not go to 1860. And so he finally moved to FC Bayern.
