Bundesliga

On the occasion of Jupp Heynckes’ birthday on May 9, 2020: 75 years, 75 anecdotes

Published

2 weeks ago

May 9, 2022

Not always of the same opinion: Jupp Heynckes (right) and Uli Hoeneß.

Player, coach, person: Jupp Heynckes. SPOX and Goal list 75 anecdotes, facts and quotes from the Bundesliga legend. Heynckes celebrates his 77th birthday on May 9th.

This article was first published on May 8, 2020.

1. When Jupp Heynckes took over as head coach Borussia Mönchengladbach in 1979, he was 34 years old – and thus the youngest head coach in Bundesliga history at the time.

2. Jupp Heynckes had previously been Udo Lattek’s assistant coach for a season – whom he also succeeded as head coach at Bayern Munich in 1987.

3. Jupp Heynckes completed his training as a football coach in his last year as an active player. His teacher was Gero Bisanz, chief trainer at the DFB and later the first national coach of the women’s national soccer team.

4. Jupp Heynckes’ former team-mates at Borussia Mönchengladbach wanted him to use ‘Siezen’ as soon as he was coach. Outraged, Jupp Heynckes refrained from such deference.

5. When Heynckes was born one day after the end of the war, his native town was still called Münchengladbach.

6. He was the ninth of ten children. His father was a blacksmith and his mother ran a general store.

7. In his youth he collected tennis balls for five marks a day to collect his pocket money.

8th. Heynckes’ childhood idol was Hungary’s legendary striker Ferenc Puskas.

9. When he was a player, his teammates at Mönchengladbach asked him for investment tips.

10 Jupp Heynckes is a trained plasterer. He completed his apprenticeship at the top of his class and dreamed of becoming an architect.

World champion, triple winner, legend: The career of Don Jupp

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Jupp Heynckes turns 77 this Monday. Above all, Heynckes celebrated great successes as a coach of FC Bayern, above all the treble in 2013. We look back on his unique career with many titles.

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Heynckes began his professional career in 1963 as a player at Borussia Mönchengladbach. In a total of twelve years, he has won four German championships, the DFB Cup and the UEFA Cup with the foals. In 308 games, the striker has scored 218 times.

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From 1967 to 1976 Heynckes (from left) completed 39 international matches for the DFB and scored 14 goals. In 1972 he became European champion before being crowned world champion two years later.

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Heynckes’ coaching career began in 1979 as the successor to Udo Lattek. Borussia may miss the championship under him, but Jupp mostly keeps the team in the top group despite numerous departures – and discovers Lothar Matthäus on the side.

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In 1987 Heynckes switched to Bayern, with whom he won the championship twice. He is still close friends with the manager at the time, Uli Hoeneß.

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After winning the championship in ’89, Heynckes treats himself to a champagne with his players Hans Dorfner and Hansi Flick.

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After Heynckes was fired at Bayern in the early 1990s (Hoeneß later spoke of his “worst mistake”), he took a seat on the Frankfurt bench after a successful stopover in Bilbao in 1994.

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After just one season with Eintracht, Heynckes is moving back to Spain. There he trained the CD Tenerife for two years. With modest means, he made it to the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup, where he was eliminated by Schalke.

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His success is rewarded with interest from Real Madrid, who sign him in 1997. Jupp wins the Champions League directly with the royals, but is released at the end of the season.

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His next stop is Portugal: Benfica Lisbon pull off a big coup by signing the CL winner and he is given a pompous reception when he takes office.

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With Benfica he misses the championship title and is third in the Portuguese league. One of his discoveries during his year with the Lisboners: Robert Enke. He made the later national goalkeeper the captain.

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Heynckes stayed on the Iberian Peninsula in 2001, but switched to the Spanish Basque Country. Bilbao has been his home for two years now, and he has successfully brought the club into the middle of the league.

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In 2003 Don Jupp returned to Germany. To be more precise, it’s going to Gelsenkirchen, but there’s no success. “Jupp is an old-school footballer, but it’s 2004,” says S04 manager Rudi Assauer and chases Heynckes out of the yard.

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In 2006, after a break, Heynckes was taken in by his old love, Mönchengladbach, with a kiss. But there was no success, the team landed on a relegation zone and “Osram” resigned in January 2007.

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After Jürgen Klinsmann’s experiment at Bayern Munich failed, Hoeneß brought his old friend Heynckes to the Isar on an interim basis in April 2009.

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After all, he still leads Munich to the vice-championship in five match days. Then a new task awaits the trainer…

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Leverkusen brings Heynckes back to NRW. The cooperation is a complete success: in 2009 Bayer did not concede a single defeat in the first 24 games – a record. He also forms Bayern loanee Toni Kroos and works with Michael Ballack.

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After moving into the Champions League, Heyckes let his contract in Leverkusen expire in 2011 – to then rejoin Bayern.

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Two seasons followed in which he found a worthy opponent in Jürgen Klopp and BVB, who brought Heynckes two sensitive defeats in the league and cup in 2012…

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Above all, the defeat in the “Finale dahoam” should have hurt Heynckes. In the Champions League final against Chelsea, he experiences perhaps the most bitter minutes of his career.

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But Jupp manages to take revenge! In 2013, his Bayern not only dominated the league, but also secured the DFB Cup victory and the Champions League title – the treble is perfect. Heynckes is definitely a legend.

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After Pep Guardiola took over as coach at FCB, Heynckes retired on the Lower Rhine. But retirement ended in October 2017: The 72-year-old returned to the Bayern coaching bench until the end of the season.

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Heynckes took over from Munich five points behind BVB. The rest is Heynckes magic. After the 29th match day, the sixth title in a row was certain.

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Heynckes only narrowly missed the possible triple again. In the semi-finals of the Champions League, FCB lost to Real Madrid despite two brilliant performances.

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Heynckes played his last game as a coach against his successor Niko Kovac in Berlin. Eintracht surprisingly won 3-1. A bankruptcy that certainly did not diminish “Don Jupp’s” great merits.

11. Jupp Heynckes met his wife Iris in his training company. The two have been married since 1967.

12. Heynckes’ daughter Kerstin has the same birthday as her father – she will be 53 on Monday.

13. When Iris Heynckes fell ill with cancer in 2004, her husband took a year and a half to look after his wife.

14 Iris Heynckes does not call Jupp Heynckes Jupp, but Josef.

15 The farm in Schwalmtal where the Heynckes live is called “Casa de los gatos”. In addition to the Heynckes and the aforementioned cats, “six muscovy ducks and wonderful fish in the pond” also live there, as Heynckes recently said SID recently told. The beloved long-haired German Shepherd Cando passed away in 2019. He was almost 14 years old.

16 Cando played a crucial role in Heynckes’ decision to become Bayern coach for the fourth time in 2017: first his wife Iris and daughter Kerstin gave their go. “Then Cando barked twice, and then the thing was wiped dry.”

17 When Cando was still alive, that meant luxury for Heynckes: “When I’ve taken care of my animals in the morning, walked my dog, showered, swam and then sat with my wife at the breakfast table or on the terrace, where I don’t have any time pressure. Unwind. That’s luxury: having time at your disposal.”

18 After the treble in 2013, the Bayern players gave him a koi for his pond as a farewell gift; Jupp Heynckes christened the fish Philippo – after Captain Philipp Lahm.

19 Bastian Schweinsteiger thought he was in California when he visited Schwalmtal: “Are we in Los Angeles?” asked the midfielder and congratulated him: “A great garden here.”

20 Jupp Heynckes always managed to “get all the players and the whole team on board,” Bastian Schweinsteiger wrote to Jupp Heynckes in a birthday letter in Bayern-Vereinsmagazin 51: “I don’t know anyone who has ever spoken ill of you.”

21 During Jupp Heynckes’ second term in Munich he invented the central midfielder Bastian Schweinsteiger. “Louis van Gaal, who took over for the next season, said later that he watched those games and that he saw me as a central midfielder ever since,” Schweinsteiger wrote in Bayern-Magazin 51.

22 Jupp Heynckes already had a gold coin collection in his early 30s

23 Jupp Heynckes’ favorite drink when he was playing is said to have been fresh milk.

24 Fast cars gave him as little as a gambler, as did other temptations of profit. Jupp Heynckes is said to have been to Lovers’ Lane, the legendary discotheque owned by his teammate Günter Netzer in Mönchengladbach, exactly once – when the singer Udo Jürgens, whom Heynckes valued, was a guest.

25 Jupp Heynckes is friends with singer Udo Lindenberg.