The most left-wing xi in history

[Heliotrope]

The most left-wing xi in history

Wasn't the dockworkers t-shirt Steve McManaman's idea, so wouldn't he deserve a vote?

[Kurt Bafokeng]

The most left-wing xi in history

Being a spy for the regime is not left-wing to me, but what do I know.

Includign St Pauli as a whole is nonsense, especially nowadays, but back in the late 1980s they had Volker Ippig in goal, who definitely fits the bill. After school he volunteered to work in Nicaragua and already whilst playing in the third and second division, he lived in the occupied houses in Hamburg's famous Hafenstrasse.

When Felix Magath took over at Wolfsburg, he gave Ippig a job (who had been at near-bankrupt Lübeck at the time) as a keeper-coach. The picture shows him at a St Pauli Nostalgia XI match last year.

[Kowalski]

The most left-wing xi in history

A case for Mattias Sindelar?

"When Germany seized Austria in the Anschluss of March 1938, Sindelar was asked to play for the new united national team. He refused, pleading old age. However, Germany's manager Sepp Herberger would later recall: "I almost had the impression that discomfort and rejection, linked to the political developments, had prompted his refusal. I felt I understood him. He appeared liberated when I told him so."

Sindelar told the old chairman of his club Austria Vienna, ostracized as a Jew: 'The new chairman has forbidden me to greet you, but I, Herr Doktor, will always greet you.'
Certainly, writes the German historian Nils Havemann, the Nazi authorities in Vienna had marked Sindelar down as "very friendly to Jews" and "fairly rejecting" of party meetings. When Sindelar bought a cafÈ from a Jew who had been forced to sell, he paid a fair price. In his Viennese dialect he told the old chairman of his club Austria Vienna, ostracized as a Jew: "The new chairman has forbidden me to greet you, but I, Herr Doktor, will always greet you."

Then there was the famous match to celebrate the Anschluss: a German select XI against Ostmark, the new name for the province that had once been Austria. Sindelar reportedly missed so many chances that he seemed to be taunting the Nazis, showing the crowd that the result had been ordered by the authorities.

Finally he did deign to score, and the Ostmark won 2-0. After the second goal, he danced before the main stand packed with Nazi dignitaries. Havemann notes that Sindelar might also have been disgruntled that the Nazis, by banning professional football, had taken away his livelihood."

A case for FC Start?

"The German Luftwaffe team Flakelf asked for a re-match, which was planned on 9 August at Zenit stadium. An SS officer was appointed as referee, and FC Start were aware that he would be biased against them. Some anonymous sources warned FC Start of possible punishment if they did not lose the game up to the Germans.[citations needed] Despite this, the team decided to play as always. They also refused to give a Nazi salute to their opponents before the match.

Just as the the FC Start players expected, the Nazi referee ignored Flakelf fouls. The German team quickly targeted the goalkeeper Trusevych who, after a sustained campaign of physical challenges, was kicked in the head by a Flakelf forward and left groggy. While Trusevych was recovering, Flakelf went one goal up.

The referee continued to ignore FC Start appeals against their opponents' violence. The Flakelf team went on with their war of intimidation using all the tactics of a dirty team, going for the man not the ball, shirt-holding, and tackling from behind, as well as going over the ball. Despite this FC Start scored with a long shot from a free kick by Kuzmenko. Then Honcharenko, against the run of play, dribbled the ball around almost the entire Flakelf defence and tapped it into in the German net to make the score 2-1. By half-time, FC Start were yet another goal up.

The second half was almost an anti-climax. Each side scored twice. Towards the end of the match, with FC Start in an almost unbeatable position at 5-3, Klimenko, a defender, got the ball, beat the entire German rearguard and walked around the German goalkeeper. Then, instead of letting it cross the goal line, he turned around and kicked the ball back towards the centre circle. The SS referee blew the final whistle before the ninety minutes were up."

Beckenbauer V Breitner

"Simon Kuper selects ultra-bourgeois Franz Beckenbauer and Maoist teammate Paul Breitner for his Political Football First XI.

It barely made the news outside Germany. Bayern Munich are planning to give their ex-player Paul Breitner a contract as an adviser. "Once an expert, always an expert," explained Bayern's general manager Uli Hoeness, who as a young man once hid Breitner in the cellar of their shared house.

Franz Beckenbauer, Bayern's president and a fellow world champion of Breitner's and Hoeness's in 1974, had presumably approved the contract. Breitner said he was so happy at Bayern he didn't need a contract, but that wasn't the point. One of postwar Germany's great political conflicts had quietly ended.

When the teenaged Breitner came to Bayern from a small southern German town in 1970, he was one of many young Germans inspired by the student rebellions of 1968. In an unfocused way, "Red Paul" was a rebel. He grew a beard, claimed to read Lenin and Marx, and when called up for the army hid in the cellar while Hoeness told the military police, "He isn't here."

Most famously of all, Breitner had himself photographed seated in a rocking chair beneath a poster of Mao Tse-Tung, while supposedly reading a Chinese communist propaganda newspaper. In an added flourish, a Boxer dog sat on the floor beside Breitner.

Most famously, Breitner had himself photographed seated in a rocking chair beneath a poster of Mao Tse-Tung, while supposedly reading a Chinese communist propaganda newspaper.

Today the picture seems hilarious. Breitner is obviously trying to look like a child's idea of a European intellectual, with beard and newspaper, as if he were Lenin in Switzerland waiting for the revolution instead of a left-back. By the time of the photograph Mao had killed millions of Chinese, but Breitner, like most western Maoists, was not bothered about detail.

As a left-back, Breitner fit perfectly into the brilliant Bayern team. As a leftie, he could not have chosen a worse club. The dominant figure at Bayern was the libero Franz Beckenbauer. Like Breitner, Beckenbauer thought about life beyond football, but came to the opposite conclusions. When Breitner saw Germans in power, he wanted to rebel. Beckenbauer wanted to join them.

The "Kaiser" was an instinctive bourgeois. He had married young - to the first in a parade of elegant blondes - bought a semi-detached house, and taken elocution lessons. He always tried to ally himself with the powers that be: with the conservative Christian Social Union that has ruled Bavaria for decades, and with Germany's mighty right-wing tabloid Bild Zeitung.

Inevitably Breitner got up his nose. In fact he got up the noses of most conservative Germans when he said, for instance, that listening to the national anthem before international matches "ruins the concentration". Opposing fans who bought into Breitner's pose would scream "Maoist! Communist!" at him. His response: "You know what? I'd really wanted to play normally. But you're shouting such rubbish that to shut your mouths I'll play even better."

Sadly for Breitner, although he was a demon of the right, he never became a hero of the '68 left. That role went to the long-haired hedonist Gunter Netzer, even though Netzer was apolitical. Breitner was too weird, difficult, unglamorous to be a hero.

Yet Breitner was much more like Beckenbauer than he let on. Both men were born capitalists. Breitner, who drove a Maserati, once said he would market his backside if necessary."

From http://www.channel4.com/news/general/political_football

[Brandenburger Toro]

The most left-wing xi in history

Any takers for Russian speaker and dedicated Marxist Tony Galvin?

[Brandenburger Toro]

The most left-wing xi in history

And now I see the article. Typical. Didn't know that about Chris Hughton, though.

[G-Man]

The most left-wing xi in history

Breitner is a revolting man, and was a revolting man back then. As much a working class hero as John Lennon.

And he did not "refuse" to travel to Argentina. He was not part of the German set-up, having "retired" after 1974. I think Breitner returned to the national team only after 1980 - not on the left, but as a midfielder.

As for "communists" in Eastern bloc sides: if they were left-wing, then they were so not necessarily out of personal conviction, but because of indoctrination. Indeed, I'd have difficulty describing the regimes of the Soviet-dominated world as being left-wing in any definition we would apply on this thread. More likely, we'd recognise left wingers among some dissidents in that system.

[G-Man]

The most left-wing xi in history

On that second Guardian link provided abive:

The South African 2006 World Cup bid leader, Danny Jordaan, was also a bit of a leftie in his day

As Thabo Mbeki has taught us, even the former anti-apartheid activist wearing the cloak of social democracy can act like a right-winger. Jordaan was an activist and ANC MP back in the day. But the ANC is such a broad movement of conflicting interests and ideologies that it is impossible to locate its members on a political scale just on account of party affiliation.

[Guest]

The most left-wing xi in history

Yogi Lurve wrote:

And he did not "refuse" to travel to Argentina. He was not part of the German set-up, having "retired" after 1974. I think Breitner returned to the national team only after 1980 - not on the left, but as a midfielder.

Yep, Bernard Dietz had taken Breitner's place at left-back well before the 1978 World Cup and was part of the Euro 76 side (and later captain at Euro 80).

Breitner reappeared in time for the 1982 World Cup and Jupp Derwall used him as his playmaker due to the relative shortage of available alternatives. He did well actually, set up goals against Spain and France in the later stages of the competition.

[AMMS]

The most left-wing xi in history

The Dynamo Kiev team circa 39/40 had a fair few partisans in it if that counts.

[G-Man]

The most left-wing xi in history

Breitner reappeared in time for the 1982 World Cup and Jupp Derwall used him as his playmaker due to the relative shortage of available alternatives.

Breitner was excellent as Bayern's playmaker, with Wolfgang Dremmler as his water-carrier. He and Rummenigge were very impressive as a combination.

I have a feeling that even if Bernd Schuster's wife had not resigned him from the national team, Derwall would've played Breitner ahead of him.

[treibeis]

The most left-wing xi in history

Lars Bastrup was supposed to have had leftish leanings (I think it was him who, when asked how he could reconcile his socialist conscience with the fact that he earned so much money for doing so little work, said, "I'm just milking a system that I despise" or something like that.)

[Purves Grundy]

The most left-wing xi in history

I found out tonight that Anghel Iordanescu is a member of the Romanian Senate, representing the centre-left Partidul Social-Democrat.

Got to earn him a place in the squad, surely.

[G-Man]

The most left-wing xi in history

Has Marc Wilmots been mentioned yet?