The "Champions League banquet" is an absolute must-attend for lovers and haters of FC Bayern München alike. These are the finest hours of the Munich club's corporate identity — and occasionally of German football itself.
On 6 March 2001, the players sat blank-eyed at dinner in their team hotel in Lyon. Olympique Lyon had just dismantled them 0-3 in the second group phase of the Champions League. Now a win was needed in the final home match against Arsenal, or they would be out of the "Königsklasse" early. Something had to be done, thought Bayern president Franz Beckenbauer. The Kaiser knew the power of the microphone and the force of the furious speech.
"Die Frage ist immer, wie man ein Spiel verliert. Das war heute eine Blamage. So, wie wir gespielt haben, das hat nichts mit Fußball zu tun. Das ist eine andere Sportart, die wir spielen. Wir haben zugeschaut, wir haben körperlos gespielt. Das ist nicht Fußball, das ist Uwe-Seeler-Traditionsmannschaft, Altherrenfußball! Tut mir leid, wenn ich das so sagen muss. Es ist so. Es hat von der Tribüne aus vermutlich noch schlimmer ausgesehen, als Ihr es unten auf dem Platz mitbekommen habt. Das hat nichts mit Fußball zu tun!"
Translation: "The question is always how you lose a match. Today was a disgrace. The way we played has nothing to do with football. It's a different sport we're playing. We stood and watched, played without any physicality. This is not football — this is Uwe Seeler's veterans' side, old-timers' football! I'm sorry if I have to say it like that. It is what it is. It probably looked even worse from the stands than you experienced down on the pitch. This has nothing to do with football!"
He dressed down the stars around Stefan Effenberg. "We are certainly in a situation where we can still salvage something. But you have to completely change your game. It is five minutes to midnight! Today's opponents were an object lesson.
This is Olympique Lyon, this is not Real Madrid, FC Barcelona or Manchester United — and today we got a lesson. Why? Because the attitude wasn't right. Because we're currently playing a football that is simply no longer adequate.
Maybe you played that way 30 years ago. You need to get back to the ABCs of football, and fast: tackles. If you don't contest the tackles, you're always the second winner. Even against a team like today's, which is certainly a good one, but not one of the best. You end up looking like an apprentice, and at the end you can be glad and say: 'Thank you very much for only losing 3-0.'"
For Beckenbauer it was clear: "In the future, you can't do this, or we'll all have to look for a different profession!" The next day on the Harald Schmidt show, they were already guessing which professions those might be... and kept landing on "professional footballer." Be that as it may.
In the end, Beckenbauer's words worked wonders: the Bayern players, who spontaneously gathered in Effenberg's room after the dressing-down and swore to prove the Kaiser wrong, finally won the European champions' trophy again after 25 years — without losing another match, including the final against Valencia in Milan.