Special Moments
Every football fan felt the shock. On February 8, 1981, the respected fellow coach Kuno Klötzer was seriously injured in a car accident on the B214 between Celle and Braunschweig on an icy road. Broken ribs, lacerations, concussion. "Knight Kuno," as they christened him in Hamburg, was fortunate in his misfortune.
Kuno tried once more to return to the Werder Bremen bench. At nearly 59, he was one of the old guard in this business, this brutal coaching business. How tough life in the Bundesliga coaching guild can be — I experienced that first-hand.
On April 30, 1978, Borussia Dortmund relieved me of my coaching duties after a 0-12 defeat at Borussia Mönchengladbach on the final Bundesliga matchday. The media, where I had often rubbed people the wrong way and whom I had frequently blamed for the fast-paced nature of the football business, were of course not gentle. "Otto Torhagel" was still the mildest name for the greatest disaster any team in Germany's top flight had ever endured — and for which I bore the responsibility. Some particularly clever journalists even suggested I had deliberately lost by such a margin so that Gladbach could still become German champions. Match-fixing and so on. That was nonsense, of course. "The people who wrote that don't dare speak to me anymore. It first appeared in BILD — they were simply looking for a story," was my response to the fierce accusations at the time.
Since voluntarily resigning my coaching post at Arminia Bielefeld in the 2. Liga in October 1979 — with DSC president Jörg Auf der Heyde suggesting I had "lacked self-motivation" and could "only achieve short-term success with teams" — I was even considered virtually unhirable in the business. That is just about the worst thing that can happen to you as a Bundesliga coach. When people no longer believe you can achieve lasting success as a manager, you are the poorest soul in the league.
At Fortuna Düsseldorf I showed everyone what I could do. That I was not merely the "firefighter" raging up and down the touchline like a madman, as the league perceived me. "Rehhagel will calm down eventually," Toni Schumacher prophesied in 1986. My star pupil in Düsseldorf, Klaus Allofs, whom I later brought to Werder Bremen too, confirmed this impressively: "He arrived as the firefighter, the wisecracker, the coach who can save a team but doesn't stay long. He'd been at a few clubs, but didn't yet have the experience. Nevertheless, he was able to set up the team well, to recognise what mattered."
DFB-Pokal winners in 1980 with Fortuna, my first title as a coach. A 0-3 defeat at 1. FC Kaiserslautern in December 1980 and 16th place led to my departure from Düsseldorf, as the club had already secured the services of Heinz Höher. He, like me, had the dubious image of a "firefighter."
Fortunately, Kuno Klötzer was feeling better by February 1981. But he had persistent headaches and could no longer fulfil the coaching role at Werder Bremen on a permanent basis. Werder Bremen's manager Rudi Assauer got in touch. He persuaded me to take over from Klötzer at Werder in the 2. Liga. In the meantime, he had been sitting on the bench himself during Kuno's absence. He had already done that during the 1979/80 relegation season — making announcements that would be unthinkable today. "In that sense, there is a dream coach, the coach who gets us back out from the bottom — that's who I want," Assauer said in January 1980. He brought in 67-year-old coaching veteran Fritz Langner and, to lighten the mood before the away match in Munich, treated the entire squad to schnapps.
You can imagine that this pub-footballer mentality was no use. To Assauer's credit, he stayed after the 1980 relegation, the worst season Werder Bremen had ever had in the Bundesliga. They had conceded 93 goals, eleven of them against champions FC Bayern München alone. "I helped screw this up, I'll fix it too," said Assauer. His boss, anaesthetist Dr. Franz Böhmert, who had been Werder president since 1970, chose more drastic words a year later: "The club was in a coma." "In the 2. Bundesliga," Franz astutely observed, "they train and pay like in primary school." Assauer, however, drew a salary line: "No player earns more than 200,000 marks."
That drove most of the players away. Dieter "Budde" Burdenski was one of the few who stayed. Otherwise, Werder Bremen's 2. Liga squad was met with biting mockery from the media. "The new players almost give Werder fans the feeling that the club is setting up a refuge at the Weserstadion for ageing and left-behind footballers," wrote DER SPIEGEL, "the new sweeper Klaus Fichtel is 35, the new centre-forward Erwin Kostedde is 34." Harsh.
From day one I would prove the opposite with my boys. Erwin Kostedde, who had already been my player at Dortmund and Offenbach and scored more goals under no other coach than during our time together, repaid my trust with nine goals in twelve matches. The comeback as Werder coach ended with a commanding 4-2 win at Union Solingen, also thanks to a Kostedde goal. A 6-0 home win against Alemannia Aachen followed.
A few days later, Kuno Klötzer went to Dr. Franz Böhmert and relinquished the coaching position at Werder Bremen in my favour. It was the decisive moment for me, but also for Böhmert and his SVW — the moment that would turn everything around. Together, we returned to the Bundesliga in commanding fashion in 1981, with the club's best-ever goal tally in professional football of 93 goals scored.
But the three sackings in my coaching career up to that point had made me more cautious. After the 4-2 against Borussia Mönchengladbach on the opening matchday, I declined all congratulations. Many may have interpreted that as typical Otto arrogance, but I stand by what I said at the time: "Football fame lasts only a week." That was no different after our greatest triumphs.