MANCHESTER CITY’S LEGENDARY GOALKEEPER
For most people interested in soccer and its history, the name Bert Trautmann suggests words like “German”, “broken neck”, “bravery”, and “phenomenal ability”. Let’s take the broken neck bit first.
Event: 1956 FA Cup Final.
Place: Wembley Stadium
Teams: Manchester City and Birmingham City
After a string of brilliant shot-stopping saves, Manchester City’s West Bremen-born goalkeeper Bernhard Carl “Bert” Trautmann, 75 minutes into the match dived at the feet of the inward-rushing Birmingham striker Peter Murphy. In the sickening collision, Murphy’s knee crashed into Trautmann’s neck.
What nobody knew then was that the blow broke Bert’s neck, dislocating five vertebrae. Knocked unconscious, he was revived. Dazed and in pain the German astonishingly insisted on continuing, and he saw out the final 15 minutes of the game. Manchester City won the Cup on a 3 – 1 scoreline.
Trautmann, whose father was a dockworker, joined Jungvolk, the junior branch of the Hitler Youth Movement, when he was only ten in 1933. In 1941 he joined the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, became a paratrooper, and was sent to the Russian Front.
Back on the Eastern Front towards the end of the war, he was captured by the British and ended up in Prisoner of War Camp 50, which was sited near St Helens. At war’s end he declined the offer of repatriation and played amateur football for St Helen’s Town. He worked for a time on a farm, and then on bomb disposal, defusing unexploded Luftwaffe bombs around Merseyside.
But Manchester City, aware of his outstanding performances as a goalkeeper, signed him in 1949 as a professional. There were objections to the idea of employing a foreign national, a citizen of a country that had been a bitter and devastating enemy in wartime. But as a footballer he was an outstanding acquisition for the club.
He made 508 appearances for City over a period of 15 years, went by bus every day to the club’s grounds, and became “a symbol of truth and reconciliation.” He was the first foreign player to be named Footballer of the Year.
I remain greatly indebted to Bert for introducing me to a lot of the German squad at their headquarters in Manchester for what turned out to be the winners of the Euros in England. When I asked him about the Cup Final in which he suffered the broken neck, he said, “I just played on adrenalin.”
We had a nice long chat about football in general, and specifically about the upcoming Euros — a very sincere man I’m so happy to have met.
