“AFTER MY CHALLENGE ON BATTISTON, THEY HUNG EFFIGIES OF ME IN THE STREET — PEOPLE TRIED TO KIDNAP MY CHILDREN”
Harald ‘Toni’ Schumacher was voted the most unpopular person in France after the 1982 World Cup, pushing Adolf Hitler into second place. Forty years on, he tells FFT how one infamous incident changed his life
Interview Ed McCambridge
elieve it or not, becoming a goalkeeper was my mother’s idea of calming me down. Growing up in Duren in West Germany, I used to be an outfield player. I’d come home bruised and battered after kicking a football around in the streets with my friends, almost too exhausted to speak.
But my mother was a massive influence on me as a child. I grew up in a poor home – my father had to work long hours to try to support our family. He was rarely around, so she was the boss, even when it came to football matters.
“Isn’t there a position where you can channel your energy a little better, Toni?” she used to ask me. “What about goalkeeper? That might suit you more.”
It was my mother, too, who told me to sign for FC Köln when I was a promising teenager – I had my pick of several professional clubs. “They’re a good side,” she said. “They have some international players, a great president, they’re not too far from home and you’ll be happy there.” The prospect of winning titles may have been higher elsewhere, but mum was always the boss. It turned out to be a great decision. After breaking into the first team in 1972, I quickly became one of the top goalkeepers in West Germany. We may not have had the stars of some of the bigger sides, but that didn’t stop us from winning the Bundesliga and DFB-Pokal double in 1978.
My domestic success is well known in my homeland, but it was with the national team that I achieved notoriety around the world. After making my West Germany debut away to Iceland in 1979, I quickly established myself as the team’s No.1, replacing the great Sepp Maier just before Euro 1980. Despite travelling to Italy as part of a really young side, we surprised a lot of people by winning the competition, defeating Belgium 2-1 in the final.
Any player fortunate enough to win an international tournament tends to be remembered primarily for that moment. Not me. I also played in two World Cup finals, but those aren’t the days I’m known for either. Instead, I’m almost exclusively remembered for a World Cup semi-final, one so notorious it’s still referred to as ‘Die Nacht von Sevilla’ – ‘The Night in Seville’.
We’d made a disappointing start to the 1982 World Cup in Spain. West Germany had gone
