Franz Beckenbauer, widely regarded among the greatest football player of all time, has died yesterdy at the age of 78 in Germany. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in a social media post expressed grief over the death of Beckenbauer and called him One of the absolute greats of football. 

Known in football-obsessed Germany as “the Kaiser” meaning “the Emperor”, Beckenbauer played a central role in some of the country’s greatest sporting achievements. He collected 103 caps for West Germany, winning the 1972 European championship and then the World Cup on home soil. Franz Beckenbauer’s Bayern Munich team was the best club side in the world during the mid-1970s, winning three successive European Cups and three successive Bundesliga titles, and Beckenbauer himself was twice named European Footballer of the year.
 
In 2016 he was fined by FIFA’s ethics committee for failing to co-operate with an inquiry into corruption over the awarding of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups.

Over the next few years, he was engaged in tending to health issues, and the last time he appeared at Bayern Munich’s Allianz Arena was in August 2022, when he attended a match of Bayern Munich against Borussia Monchengladbach.