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Rudi Völler as a Werder Bremen player in 1986
Photo:
Liedel / IMAGO / Kicker
Rudi Völler was wide awake again.
The night before Bayer Leverkusen had played in the European Cup in Bergamo.
The next morning in March, the sports director turned up again at the DFB Bundestag in Bonn.
Bubbly because after the game in Bergamo he failed miserably in his attempt to encourage a few more people in the club to go out in Italy.
"But no one goes to party after the game like it used to," said Völler.
Nothing is like it used to be, and who could judge that better than Rudi Völler?
The 62-year-old played his first Bundesliga game in 1980 and since then he's basically been a constant presence, the boy from Hanau, the city where he's now been made an honorary citizen.
These guys are called children of the Bundesliga, and they were part of it before there were any exit clauses in football, no streaming services, no half-time analyses, no Champions League and certainly no video evidence.
Otto Rehhagel was one of them, as were Felix Magath, Jupp Heynckes, Ewald Lienen, Friedhelm Funkel, Rudi Völler and Dortmund's Michael Zorc.
They have witnessed the change in this sport, participated, they also helped shape it.
Völler will leave Bayer as managing director on Saturday, Zorc will resign as sporting director of Borussia Dortmund.
Both took over their jobs in 2004, now they are quitting at the same time.
Hard to imagine a Bundesliga without Völler, without Zorc.
You were always there.
Völler interviews were more entertaining than some games
Top scorer at 1860 Munich in the second division was Völler in 1982, then national player at Werder Bremen, Italian champion with AS Roma, Champions League winner with Olympique Marseille, world champion with Germany anyway, spitting affair included, Ruuuuuu-di, end of career at Bayer 04, manager, sporting director, managing director, oh yes, national coach, "there is only one" Rudi Völler, the inventor of the anger speech, shit with cheese, Waldi Hartmann's wheat beer.
He was always good for a controversial TV interview.
There was a time when the Völler interview after the game was more entertainment than the 90 minutes before.
With distance.
Michael Zorc was the alternative, a symbol of club loyalty, once black and yellow, always black and yellow, 463 games for BVB from 1981 to 1998. Team captain, German champion, champions league winner, cup winner, he missed nothing when it came to success in the club.
When he became a professional in Dortmund, Rüdiger Abramczik and Manni Burgsmüller were in the BVB squad, Jupp Tenhagen, Lothar Huber and Rolf Rüssmann, the coach was Udo Lattek, it was a different football world, on the border between the romantic Ruhr area and big business.
Zorc can still claim that he got to know both.
He also switched to management afterwards, but an interview like Völler's with him?
Inconceivable.
Someone who was called Susi as a player wouldn't say "shit" in front of the microphone.
A quiet respectful person
In a business that encourages the ramp pig mentality by all means, Zorc has always been one for the quiet tone.
Never loud, he was happy to leave the attack to managing director Hans-Joachim Watzke.
He was a person of respect even without this.
Michael Zorc was an institution in Dortmund, but Völler also managed in Leverkusen to be seen as Mister Bayer and no longer as a Bremen or Roman player, even as a national coach.
This value-conservative of football, a people's tribune, has his share in the fact that this club no longer only appears as a works club, as a subsidiary of a group.
Between all the managers and suit types, Völler seemed more and more like a stranger over the years, somehow caught up in it.
And when he got excited about the latte macchiato company, as he usually only does about the referee's performance, then it says, with a mild smile: Oh, yes, that's Rudi.
He can do that.
Ultimately, he was always skeptical about the modernization of football.
Football as a scientific enterprise, data-based, managed according to the latest findings in team psychology, Völler's rumble, with his "we used to do it differently" in comparison, seemed like a relic.
The fact that a player ended his career at the age of 29, like the then national team player Marcell Jansen did, was something he, whose whole life revolved around football, could not understand.
Völler said at the time that someone like that had never loved football.
During his most famous freak out in the ARD television studio after the international match against Iceland in 2003, he accused ARD expert Günther Netzer of glorifying football's past, later he himself was one who conjured up the good old days.
From one room to the next
The good old days: Völler still played with Kickers Offenbach in the 2nd division, he played in the Munich Lions' first division, then Bayern Libero Klaus Augenthaler fouled him badly when he played in Bremen for six months he was injured and made his first appearance again in the second leg against Bayern.
No Werder Bremen fan will forget that evening in April 1986, when Rudi Völler was fouled in the penalty area and Michael Kutzop scored the penalty kick against the goal post.
You can walk through football history with Völler and Zorc as if they were museum guides, from one exhibition room in the museum to the next.
When BVB won the cup in 1989, Zorc was already the captain, it was the victory that heralded the heyday of BVB, a time that became so great that even the mismanagers Gerd Niebaum and Michael Maier couldn't do anything about it in the end.
Zorc witnessed BVB's almost bankruptcy up close, today the listed football company is handling transfer fees at dizzying heights.
It's fair to assume that the sporting director played his part.
He hated the song »There is only one Rudi Völler«, Völler recently revealed to the »Süddeutsche Zeitung«.
At some point in public appearances, he stipulated that they should “please not play this song”.
He was popular, Rudi Nazionale, but everything has its limits.
On October 14, 1983, Völler and Zorc met face-to-face for the first time in the Bundesliga.
Werder Bremen won 2-1 against BVB, the otherwise level-headed Michael Zorc saw the red card, Ronald Reagan announced that day that he would run for a second term as US President.
A week later, Udo Lindenberg performed in the Palace of the Republic of the GDR, and the Nobel Peace Prize went to Lech Wałęsa.
It's all been almost 40 years.
It was a different time.
Rudi Völler and Michael Zorc have experienced it.
And after the games we celebrated.