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Gerd Zimmermann, called Zimbo
Photo: Liedel / IMAGO / Kicker
When someone spoke or wrote about Gerd Zimmermann, the word Flattermann was not far away.
The professional from Fortuna Düsseldorf had something like the patent for this type of long-range shots.
Zimmermann took measurements from a distance of 25, 30, 35 meters and simply aimed at the goal.
With such hardness that the then HSV goalkeeper Rudi Kargus was able to hold the ball, but it had such force that Kargus practically flew into the goal with the ball in his hands.
When Fortuna had a great moment against Bayern Munich in 1978 and sent the Bayern stars Paul Breitner and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge home 7-1, Zimmermann was also one of the main players.
When the score was 4:1, there were penalties for Fortuna, Zimmermann competed against the great Sepp Maier with the intention: "Now I'll pull a parting of Sepp Maier." The Bayern goalkeeper saved his hair, but he was against the shot , almost as a matter of course, powerless.
Part of a legendary elf
The saying has stood the test of time.
Zimmermann died on Wednesday at the age of 72, and Fortuna commemorated him on Twitter with the sentence "The man who could shoot a part."
Zimmermann completed 166 league games for Fortuna between 1974 and 1980, he experienced the best times of this team.
Fortuna in the 1970s was a collection of top players, personalities who still define the image of this club today: the elegant libero Gerd Zewe, the striker Wolfgang Seel, a kind of Rhenish Gerd Müller, the Allofs brothers Klaus and Thomas, in the Goal Wilfried Woyke, the midfield axis around director Dieter Brei and his worker Rudi Bommer, behind the clearers Heiner Baltes and Egon Köhnen with the clear parting.
As if Gerd Zimmermann had drawn it.
Zimmermann, called Zimbo, was the nominal stopper in this team.
But if you imagined a tough defender who only knew the opposing half by hearsay, you couldn't be further from him.
Zimmermann interpreted his position in the most modern way imaginable.
For him, playing up front was part of his defensive work, in the 1978/1979 season he scored 13 goals, and in total there were 44 Bundesliga goals for Fortuna.
High and low point in Basel
Penalties, where he pulled the part of the goalkeepers, flutterers of course, his teammate Klaus Allofs once talked about a Bundesliga game at Karlsruher SC: “I thought Gerd would play it for me.
But he hit it from a certain 35 meters and hit it.
I had never experienced anything like it before.«
This Fortune team had its peak on May 16, 1979 in Basel's Sankt Jakob Stadium.
Under the young coach Hans-Dieter Tipphauer, Düsseldorf had made it to the final of the European Cup, where the big FC Barcelona were waiting.
With world stars like Johan Neeskens and Hans Krankl.
What could have been the pinnacle of Zimmermann's career became its low point.
After just four minutes he was fouled so rudely that he had to be substituted.
The diagnosis: cruciate ligament rupture, just like his teammate Dieter Brei, who had to leave the pitch after 24 minutes with a serious injury.
From outside they had to watch how Düsseldorf lost 3:4 after extra time in a dramatic final.
The careers of both players at Fortuna were then as good as over.
Rehhagel saw no use for it
Zimmermann fought his way back into the team in the following season, but the new coach Otto Rehhagel saw no further use for the player and even dropped him from the squad.
Zimmermann left Fortuna frustrated, played in the USA for a few more years, then returned to Germany: to Union Solingen in the second division.
Certainly an honor for Union Solingen, but an inappropriate end to a career for someone whose shot half the Bundesliga had feared a few years earlier.
In the end, he turned a nine-game lap of honor at Fortuna Cologne, the club from which he once switched to Fortuna Düsseldorf.
For a then record transfer fee of 800,000 D-Mark, which the Düsseldorf company then transferred to Fortuna Cologne.
Never before had so much money been spent on a defender in the league.
He was allowed to call himself German champion, as a young player at Borussia Mönchengladbach he had taken part in Borussia's first title win under Hennes Weisweiler, even if he was hardly used at the time.
Formally, he celebrated the greatest success of his career with Mönchengladbach.
But Gerd Zimmermann, the man who could shoot a parting, will remain a Düsseldorf fortune for all eternity.