Bayern spy on Basler. That's how it goes! Bayern stars Mario Basler and Sven Scheuer headed off to a rehabilitation stay in Donaustauf in November 1999 — and at the end, at least the Palatinate native Basler had to find a new job. The innocuous visit to a Regensburg pizzeria ended in a full-blown brawl between Scheuer and a heckler, after which Mario Basler had "an outstanding conversation with a police officer."
At FC Bayern, nobody found this kind of metaphor amusing. Basler and Scheuer were suspended; the keeper was later pardoned, but for "Super Mario" it was over at FCB. He moved back to 1. FC Kaiserslautern, where he had made his Bundesliga debut in 1988/89 in the meaningless final match at Bayer Leverkusen (1-0).
The sacking, which in retrospect seems disproportionate, had a long backstory. Before Bayern handed Basler his papers, they had him surveilled by a private investigator. A green Golf shadowed the running wonder. A little later, Bayern manager Uli Hoeneß summoned him for a meeting. "I said: 'So, Manager, everything okay?'
'And what's new?' He says, 'Nothing, you didn't do anything at the weekend. Nothing happened.' I said, 'Shit, right? You could have saved the money on the idiot who followed me in the green Golf,'" Basler recounted in his characteristically colourful style in the Cologne "Express." Hoeneß, Basler continued, had immediately given himself away through his reaction. "Super Mario" on the subject: "He went all red and then he started grinning.
I said, 'If that guy wasn't put on me by you yesterday, you can shit in my shoes.' He fell about laughing." Knowing full well, too, that his detective had already collected plenty of incriminating material — Basler was an avid casino-goer, and drank and smoked unashamedly in public. Now Basler's time was up and the Palatinate boy Mario was back home: "I'm glad I don't have to listen to this nonsense from Uli Hoeneß any more."