Kick off! roving reporter Kamilla Jarzina has revisited that idiosyncratic era in the company of Dieter Hoeness and Horst Hrubesch.
It was a decade of north-south duels. On one side, Bayern Munich. On the other, first Hamburg, then Werder Bremen. Two matches stand out as the epitome of the struggle for Bundesliga dominance:
In April 1982, Bayern hosted Hamburg with an eye to regaining the upper hand in the league race. Bayern was 3:1 up, aided by a brace from Dieter Hoeness. Then Horst Hrubesch stepped up to turn the game around. Hamburg won 4:3 on the day and went on to become German Champions.
Three years later, one of the shocks of the decade. In the penultimate match of the season, Bremen had a chance to seal victory over Bayern - and the Bundesliga title - with a penalty kick just before full time. But Michael Kutzop hit the post and Bayern came away with a draw. On the final day, Bayern trounced Gladbach, leaving Bremen needing just one point against Stuttgart to win the league. But they lost. After holding the top spot for the entire season, Bremen had to hand over the league title to a fairly astonished Bayern Munich.
In this latest installment marking the half-century of the Bundesliga, two of the towering figures of the game, Horst Hrubesch and Dieter Hoeness offer eye-witness accounts and anecdotes about what it was like to play German football in the 80s. What was the "libero", what was it like to be man-marked for 90 minutes by a hulking defender? And who were the heroes of the time - and was it like working for top coaches such as Pal Csernai, Udo Lattek, Branco Zebec and Ernst Happel. Tune in and get a truly insider view of the Bundesliga in the 1980s.