Franz Beckenbauer, German soccer star, dies at 78

Mr. Beckenbauer, one of the greatest European soccer players of all time, spent most of his professional career in his native Munich, propelling the once-second-tier Bayern Munich club to international prominence.

He played in three World Cups and served as captain of the West German national team that won the international crown in 1974. Despite having no experience, he became the head coach, or manager, of the national team in 1984, leading it to a second-place finish at the 1986 World Cup and to the championship four years later.

He joined Brazil’s Mario Zagallo — whose death was announced last week — and Didier Deschamps of France as the only men to hoist the World Cup trophy as player and coach.

Mr. Beckenbauer began his career as a forward, a player who is a constant threat to score. He later moved to back line as a defender, where he helped reshape the role of the sweeper (sometimes called libero), who is the last line of defense before the goalkeeper.

He often covered, or marked, an opposing team’s top scorer and moved from one side of the field to the other, intercepting passes or stealing the ball with a deft flick of his foot. He was rarely faked out of position. Pelé, the renowned Brazilian player who was Mr. Beckenbauer’s teammate with the New York Cosmos in the twilight of their careers, called him “one of the best I ever saw play.”

Mr. Beckenbauer, who became captain of the Bayern Munich team in his early 20s, was a formidable player with exceptional vision of the field and an intuitive understanding of how a play would develop.

He transformed his defensive position of sweeper, adding an element of excitement as he became a potent offensive force in his own right. (In that respect, he was similar to the Boston Bruins’s Bobby Orr, who was redefining the role of the hockey defenseman at the same time.)

“I was pretty much the first to interpret the position offensively, as an attacker, and not only stay back and play as a sweeper, as was usual then,” Mr. Beckenbauer said in a 2006 interview with FIFA, the international soccer organization.

“Maybe that was just my game,” he continued. “By nature I was more of an attacking player than a defensive one. That’s why I always pushed forward.”

Mr. Beckenbauer, at 5-foot-11 and 170 pounds, was not exceptionally large but had the ability to dominate the game without being a major goal scorer. He was deceptively fast and played with an unhurried elegance, always appearing to be three steps ahead of everyone else on the pitch.

He was an extraordinary passer who could anticipate the moves of his teammates and opponents. Controlling the ball from the back, he often sent a pass through a phalanx of defenders, catching a teammate on the toe 40 yards downfield.

“Every pass of his has eyes and finds his teammates, everywhere,” another Cosmos teammate, Vladislav Bogićević, once said.

Before his 21st birthday, Mr. Beckenbauer was already a star for the West German team, scoring a goal in a 2-1 victory over Sweden to secure his country’s place in the 1966 World Cup. He scored four goals during the World Cup tournament to lead West Germany to the final game against England. He closely covered England’s top player, Bobby Charlton, but England prevailed on its home turf, 4-2.

Four years later in Mexico, Mr. Beckenbauer helped avenge his country’s loss to England, scoring a goal in a 3-2 victory. In a 4-3 semifinal loss to Italy, Mr. Beckenbauer claimed a valiant place in soccer lore when he suffered a dislocated right shoulder during the game. Because West Germany had used its allotted substitutions, he stayed on the field, playing the rest of the game with his arm strapped to his chest.

In a preliminary game before the 1974 World Cup, West Germany lost to its cross-border communist rival, East Germany, creating waves of alarm among the team’s followers. As team captain, Mr. Beckenbauer approached the coach, Helmut Schön, asking him to revamp the lineup by using younger players.

The re-energized squad swept through the World Cup, winning the final game over the Netherlands, 2-1, in Munich. The victory made Mr. Beckenbauer and his teammate Gerd Müller, who scored the winning goal, national heroes.

In club play, Mr. Beckenbauer led Bayern Munich to three straight European championships from 1974 through 1976. He twice won the Ballon d’Or, or the golden ball award, as the most valuable player in Europe.

In 1977, he departed for New York after being offered a four-year contract for $2.5 million to join Pelé on the Cosmos. The aging stars won three North American Soccer League championships before Mr. Beckenbauer returned in 1980 to Germany, where he helped his new team, Hamburg SV, win the championship of the German professional league, or Bundesliga.

After a final season with the Cosmos, he retired as a player in 1983. He then turned to coaching, taking West Germany to the World Cup final in 1986, only to lose to Diego Maradona’s dynamic team from Argentina.

In the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, Mr. Beckenbauer guided the West German team to the 1990 World Cup in Italy — the last time there were separate squads before reunification of the two German states. In a World Cup final rematch with Argentina, West Germany triumphed, 1-0. Mr. Beckenbauer said victory as a coach tasted even sweeter than as a player.

Franz Anton Beckenbauer was born Sept. 11, 1945, in Munich. His father was a postal official, and his mother tended the home in the working-class neighborhood of Giesing.

He was obsessed with soccer from an early age and, against his father’s wishes, joined his first team at 9. “You are not born to become a world star in Giesing,” Mr. Beckenbauer said in 2010. “Football for me was a deliverance.”

He joined a Bayern Munich youth team at 14 but secretly hoped to play for 1860 Munich, then the city’s leading club. But when a player from the 1860 youth team slapped him across the face during a game, Mr. Beckenbauer determined he would stay with Bayern and someday make it Munich’s preeminent team. He joined the top Bayern club in 1964 and, within five years, led it to the German Bundesliga crown. By then, he was already dubbed “Der Kaiser” and, by some, “Emperor Franz.”

Mr. Beckenbauer coached Bayern Munich in the 1990s, winning the European title in 1996. He later became an official with the club and FIFA and successfully led efforts to secure the 2006 World Cup for Germany.

His actions came under scrutiny during a probe of corruption among FIFA officials, and he was suspended from the organization for 90 days in 2014. He was investigated, along with others, for possible involvement in a bribery scheme involving FIFA’s selection of Russia and Qatar as the World Cup sites for 2018 and 2022, but no charges were brought.

Mr. Beckenbauer was married three times, most recently to Heidi Burmeister in 2006. He had five children from his marriages and other relationships. A son, professional soccer player Stephan Beckenbauer, died in 2015 of a brain tumor. A complete list of survivors was not immediately available.

Beginning as a child, Mr. Beckenbauer collected pictures of faraway lands. Throughout his life, he traveled the world, always curious to see new places. When he was being wooed by New York Cosmos in 1977, he was given a helicopter ride from Manhattan to the Giants Stadium in New Jersey, where the team played.

“That was then the most modern stadium in the world,” he told a German newspaper in 2010, “with VIP boxes. We didn’t have that in Europe. As we flew over the stadium, I told them, ‘Fine, stop it, I am coming.’”