AFP, Munich :
Germany said an emotional goodbye to Franz Beckenbauer on Friday, former teammate Uli Hoeness crediting the football legend with making Germans “proud” again.
Beckenbauer died on January 7 in Austria and was laid to rest in a private ceremony in Munich five days later.
Friday’s ceremony, which featured leading lights of German football and politics, was open to the public, giving fans a final chance to celebrate the man known as ‘Der Kaiser’ – The Emperor.
Completed for the 2006 World Cup, which Beckenbauer ran as president of the organising committee, Munich’s Allianz Arena was a fitting venue for the public goodbye.
“The Allianz Arena, the most beautiful stadium in the world, would never have been built without Franz,” Hoeness said.
Despite the subzero conditions, around 20,000 people gathered under blue skies in the Bavarian capital.
The ceremony opened with a rendition of Con Te Partiro performed by Munich tenor Jonas Kaufmann.
He ended the event with Nessun Dorma, an aria from Puccini’s opera Turandot, which became the unofficial anthem of the 1990 World Cup. It was sung by the Three Tenors in Rome on the eve of the final which Germany, coached by Beckenbauer, won.
Beckenbauer’s famous number five, made of red roses, laid on the green turf of the Allianz, alongside wreaths placed by the biggest clubs in the world including Liverpool and Barcelona.
Born in 1945 in the suburbs of Munich, the peerless Beckenbauer became a national treasure in a Germany still grappling with the legacy of the Second World War.
Winning national and European titles with Bayern Munich, Beckenbauer’s West Germany captured the 1972 Euros and the 1974 World Cup.
As a coach, Beckenbauer guided the nation to their next World Cup in 1990, before playing a leading if controversial role in securing the 2006 tournament on home soil.