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Volker Graul with trainer Otto Rehhagel
Photo:
IMAGO / Horstmuller
When someone is given the attributes "rascal", "clever" and "dazzling", it can be meant positively or negatively.
In any case, they are synonyms for »interesting«.
Volker Graul was always idiosyncratic, even as a player, later as a manager, as a consultant.
His paths were not always straight, sometimes they were crooked.
In East Westphalia, however, they will above all remember his direct route to the goal.
Graul, center forward, top scorer in the second division, rascal, clever, dazzling, died a few weeks before his 70th birthday.
East Westphalia is not the metropolis of overflowing emotions, nor is it the natural center of football.
Arminia Bielefeld has just been relegated from the 1st league, SC Paderborn is an ambitious second division club, SC Verl has just kept up the class in the 3rd league, after that nothing comes for a long time.
Torjägerkanone with Bielefeld
In the 1970s and 1980s, however, the football biotope of East Westphalia came alive.
Arminia Bielefeld had slowly recovered from the consequences of the Bundesliga scandal, which had set the club back considerably through its own fault, and matured into a top club in the 2nd division.
Arminia also had a young attacker to thank for that.
The 2nd league was then divided into a north and a south season, and this young Volker Graul secured himself the top scorer in the 2nd league north with 30 goals.
He was also able to score so many times because he was so energetically backed up by another young attacker on the wing with crosses and assists.
Ewald Lienen ran over the defenses, then crossed – and Graul did the rest.
Two with minds of their own
Graul and Lienen, two with a very own mind.
On the one hand there was Lienen, who as a professional refused to give autographs and criticized capitalism.
Graul had nothing against capitalism; on the contrary, whenever he felt financially disadvantaged, he went on the barricades.
Later, as a player at FC Gütersloh, he and his old Arminia buddy Roland Peitsch went to civil court and sued for a salary of 180,000 Deutschmarks, which he believed had been withheld from him by the club and sponsor.
A professional going to court.
A scandalous incident at the time, the Westphalian Football Association reacted with a three-year ban.
Graul was so upset that he ended his football career at the age of 30 and preferred to play for a few more years with the old men at TuS Solbad Ravensberg.
The football career had started so hopefully.
As a teenager he was called up by the DFB for the youth national team, he played together with Uli Hoeneß and Rainer Bonhof.
The other two became world champions, with Graul scoring goals in Bielefeld and Gütersloh, at Fortuna Köln, FC Den Bosch in the Netherlands and Preussen Munster.
Scorer in the 4-0 win over Bayern
But he experienced his most successful time at Arminia.
In 1978, after years in the second division, the club was promoted back to the 1st Bundesliga, a year later it went down again under coach Otto Rehhagel, only to be promoted again in 1980.
In those elevator years, Arminia had a team that still gives fans tears in their eyes: Uli Stein in goal, followed by Wolfgang Kneib, Norbert Eilenfeld, Christian Sackewitz, Wolfgang »Latscher« Pohl, Gerd-Volker Schock, Frank Pagelsdorf, Lorenz- Günter Köstner, long-distance runner Uli Büscher, Hans-Werner Moors, the babyface Helmut Schröder.
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Graul during his time as manager of FC Gütersloh
Photo: Weckelmann / IMAGO
Graul was no longer in the usual position of the years before in this team, he was rarely used as a regular player, but he was one of the main characters on Arminia's biggest day.
On March 10, 1979, the big FC Bayern welcomed Bielefeld at 3.30 p.m. in the Olympic Stadium, 90 minutes later the scoreboard showed an unbelievable 4-0 for the guest.
Graul made the third goal against Sepp Maier.
To this day, this game is a highlight of the club's history.
High points were rather rare for Volker Graul after his football career, his name appeared in the headlines when it came to low points in the football business.
Graul initially hired himself out as a used car dealer, a profession that, fair or unfair, has a certain image attached to it, linked to the character question: "Would you buy a used car from this person?"
Key figure in the Calmund affair
In the past, it was sometimes only a small step from the used car trade to player advice, it was the time when this trade still had a disreputable reputation.
Graul, who had also tried his hand as a real estate agent in the meantime, played his part.
The "Westfalen-Blatt" from Bielefeld called him a "shadow man" of football.
In 2004 he was one of the key figures that led to the end of the Reiner Calmund era at Bayer Leverkusen.
The suspicion that Graul had received dubious payments from Calmund as a player advisor led to the dismissal of the long-time Bayer manager.
Also ambivalent as a manager
Graul's business contacts with player consultant Fali Ramadani, who is at least as notorious as he is famous in the industry, brought him into suspense again in connection with TuS Koblenz 2007 and kept the judiciary busy.
Football didn't let him go.
In the 1990s he was hired as manager of FC Gütersloh.
He shaped both the most successful period of the club, which at that time almost got promoted to the Bundesliga, and at the same time his name also stood for the subsequent decline with relegation to the third division.
Typical for Volker Graul: his coin in life always had two sides.
