KEIR RADNEDGE COMMENTARY —- German football is in mourning for Jurgen Grabowski, the Eintracht Frankfurt forward who played a key role in the 1970 and 1974 World Cups. He was 77.

Grabowski played 44 times (five goals) for West Germany – including the 1974 World Cup Final – and made 441 Bundesliga appearances (109 goals) on behalf of his only club with whom he won the UEFA Cup in 1980 and the German cup in 1974 and 1975.

Wolfgang Overath, a World Cup-winning team-mate, said: “He was a very fine person, a great boy as well as footballer. He could do everything with the ball.” Frankfurt spokesman Axel Hellmann said: “Jürgen Grabowski was perhaps the most perfect player to have played for Eintracht.”

Grabowski was born in Wiesbaden and started out with local Biebrich 02. Frankfurt signed him in the summer of 1965 and he made an immediate impression both as playmaker and as right winger. His one regret was never having won the Bundesliga crown. He once said: “We often beat Bayern but to be able to keep up at the top for a whole season we would have needed more top performers.”

Less than a year after his Frankfurt debut, Grabowski was selected by national coach Helmut Schon for the 1966 World Cup. He did not play in the finals in England but always recalled how much he had benefited even from the experience of being a reserve in the days before substitutes.

Later Grabowski’s career hit a setback when he contracted myocarditis as a result of angina. He regained fitness in time for the 1970 World Cup finals in Mexico when he played a key role as a substitute in the dramatic quarter-final defeat of England and then in the so-called ‘Game of the Century’ against Italy. Grabowski set up the equaliser at 1-1 for Karl-Heinz Schnellinger before Germany went down 4-3 in extra-time.

His right-wing alternations with Reinhard Libuda earned Grabowski a label as “the best substitute in the world.”

Grabowski was a member of the team who beat England 3-1 at Wembley in the quarter-finals of the 1972 European Championship though he was an unused sub for the final victory over the Soviet Union.

Two years later Grabowski was still there for the 1974 World Cup on home ground. It did not start well. He was one of the players dropped after the 1-0 defeat by East Germany in the group stage but scored the Germans’ crucial third goal in a revivalist 4-2 second round victory over Sweden in Dusseldorf.

Grabowski later described it as “the most important goal of my career.”

Retirement

Schon brought him back into the starting line-up and he helped set up the winning goal for Gerd Muller in the 2-1 victory over Netherlands in the final.

At this point Grabowski decided the time was right to retire from the national team and he refused to reconsider despite a plea from Schon ahead of the 1978 finals in Argentina.

Two years later a foul by the 18-year-old Lothar Matthaus in a Bundesliga match against Borussia Monchengladbach left Grabowski with a foot injury which ultimately forced his premature retirement. Frankfurt subsequently beat Borussia in the two-leg final of the UEFA Cup but Grabowski was bitter that he could not play and that Matthaus never apologised.

His team-mates insisted on hoisting him on their shoulders in triumph and handing him the trophy. He said: “It was a wonderful gesture but we were in a European final . . . and I missed it.”

Jürgen Grabowski born July 7, 1944, died March 10, 2022.

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