The Three Lives of the Kaiser

Franz Beckenbauer – known as ‘the Kaiser’ – was Germany's greatest-ever footballer and one of the game's biggest icons of all time, a World Cup winner as player and manager. But what is often described as a blessed life was in fact a rollercoaster ride with stunning highs and bitter lows.

He rose to fame at the 1966 World Cup in England, where after West Germany’s final defeat the British press marvelled at the grace of a ‘beaten but proud Prussian officer’. Yet there was nothing Prussian a...