- Tuesday, May 2, 2023 10:00 (GMT+7)
- 10:00 5/2/2023
Mario Basler bids farewell to his readers with a sentence that could not be more accurate about his personality: “Sometimes I am at the top, sometimes at the bottom. But I am always very close to myself.”
What is certain is that Basler’s autobiography “ Eigentlich bin ich ein super Typ ” is causing excitement. Just as he did throughout his life. An example of “careless genius”. Half of the people hate him, the other half love him. But deep down, Basler is, as his book title suggests, “Actually, I’m a great guy”.
“Most of the time I play the main role”
Amateurs play in the county league and live their lives, with beer, sausages, cigarettes after the game. No flattery to please others. Like Basler.
But Basler was different, because he was a professional player, and playing football was not just a private matter for him. Basler's mix of amateur and professional made it difficult for his employers to deal with his lifestyle.
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The free kick that put the ball into the MU net in the 1999 Champions League final. |
“Football is like theatre, and most of the time I play the leading role.” Basler likes coaches who let him do that. Bayern coach Hitzfeld didn’t dare to stop him from smoking. His favourite coach was Rehhagel, to whom he devotes a whole chapter, explaining: “The game starts at 3.30pm and finishes at 5.15pm, and after that you can do whatever you want.”
Basler's story began in the city of Neustadt an der Weinstrasse, where his mother worked as a postal worker and his father was a mechanic. At the age of five, Mario started out as a goalkeeper. But his right foot, which could kick corner kicks straight into the goal, soon caught the eye of scouts.
His father was an important role model. Only at the end of the story does Basler reveal that he had cut off contact with both parents two years before his father died. Basler’s career was not a planned choice. He was 24 when he made his Bundesliga debut. After several years as an apprentice at Kaiserslautern, the club did not want to sign him to a professional contract, and the boy from Neustadt shouted at them: “Then you can kiss my ass.”
Rot Weiss Essen was a hard-working club with little time for high-end technicians. Basler then went to Hertha Berlin. The West Berlin atmosphere was so alluring that after each match he would first go to the casino and then to the brothel, “of course just to try the strong alcohol on offer there”. Former East German national team coach Bernd Stange turned Basler into the fastest sprinter in the team thanks to a rigorous physical training regime. However, Stange could not change his lazy running habits.
During the 1992/93 season, Super Mario performed magic tricks on the pitch and then after the match found himself urinating in a urinal next to Werder Bremen coach Rehhagel. They exchanged phone numbers. The following season, Basler moved to Bremen, where the “sloppy genius” developed into one of Germany’s best midfielders. In the 1994/95 season, Basler also became the Bundesliga’s top scorer, despite playing as a right winger, scoring two goals directly from corner kicks.
Not compatible with the national team
In 1994, Basler went to the United States for the World Cup. His teammates called him “Ro-Mario”. But for him, it was a tournament where “the atmosphere was completely fucked up”. The players were distracted by petty fights within the team, between personalities like Matthaus, Klinsmann, Effenberg. Basler himself had to sit on the bench and play the role of the offended.
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Basler did not have a happy time in the German national team. |
While he was sunbathing in Chicago, his wife became pregnant with their second child. She called to say the baby’s heartbeat was not good, and Basler decided to fly home immediately. His daughter saw the light of day when he watched the national team on television. He wanted to return to the United States to play, but Germany was eliminated in the quarterfinals.
The national team and Basler were incompatible. During a practice match in Euro 1996, he collapsed on the pitch, screaming in pain. His ankle was swollen, Basler did not play a minute, there was no reason to stay. But he still managed to entertain himself while sitting bored in England, with alcohol and cigarettes. Players were allowed to have sex during the tournament. The injured German team that year still won the championship.
In 1995, Juventus were willing to pay 14 million D-Marks for Basler, but Director Lemke wanted half a million more and the deal fell through. A year later, the Bavarians profited from the gamble, Basler moved from Bremen to Bayern. At the club called “FC Hollywood”, Matthaus and Klinsmann never got along, with the Italian coach Trapattoni complaining, “I’m tired of being a nanny for these players.”
Coach Hitzfeld arrived, signed Effenberg from M'Gladbach, creating the "hellish trio" of Basler, Matthaus and Effenberg. Skepticism was inevitable, but at least for a while, Hitzfeld's man-management was successful.
Bild ran a front-page story on April 1, 1998, that Bayern had hired a private detective to follow Basler. Some thought it was a prank, but Bayern confirmed it, even insisting that it was a club employee and not a detective. “Sometimes young people need to be looked after,” said General Manager Uli Hoeness. “I don’t consider this an unusual measure.”
“I bring entertainment to the audience”
Hitzfeld's side reached the 1999 Champions League final, against Manchester United. Basler scored from a free kick in the sixth minute. And then, uncharacteristically, he joined in the defence, playing a superb game, until he was withdrawn in the 87th minute. Disaster struck for the Germans as Manchester United came back to win 2-1 in stoppage time.
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Basler and his second wife Iris. |
Basler smoked a cigarette sadly in the bathroom. And then drowned his sorrows with alcohol, climbed on the table in the bar and danced wildly. He learned to compensate for the disappointment of his childhood.
His father promised him 5 DM for every goal he scored when he was a student. After 40 goals, a total of 200 DM, his father explained that it was too much and stopped giving him any more. Without any motivation, Basler still scored 76 goals that year.
Basler doesn’t blame himself much for the Nou Camp game. He blames himself for turning down the “lifetime contract” that Karl-Heinz Rummenigge offered him afterwards. He asked for equal pay with captain Effenberg. The request was rejected. Bayern began to want to get rid of him. The final straw came in October 1999, when he and reserve goalkeeper Sven Scheuer got into a fight in a restaurant.
Basler was reportedly trying to balance a bottle of wine on his head while sitting on a chair stacked on top of a table. He then became angry when a diner took a photo of him. In the book, he explains, a diner teased Scheuer, and he lived up to his name (Scheuer means shy) and beat the other diner. Basler came to his friend’s defense, but Hoeness didn’t believe him.
Basler is unrepentant. “I entertain, and the audience wants to be entertained.” Such a person is unlikely to become a successful coach. Basler has tried and failed. He has been a TV commentator and has participated in reality shows. Opening a bar is also his hobby and experience. Basler’s fortune of 15 million euros is enough to make him independent.
With his first wife, Basler had a son, Marcel, and a daughter, Alisa, who was born during the 1994 World Cup. In 1995, he met his second wife, Iris, and they married in 1998 and had a son, Maurice. They divorced in 2009. Basler dated his girlfriend, Doris Bueld, from then until 2015, when they broke up. Then he met Jessica Paszka, through the reality TV show “Big Brother”.
In 2017, Basler got back together with his ex-wife Iris, only to split up again two years later. As if life wasn't complicated enough, Basler is now back with his girlfriend Doris.
Chinh Phong
Basler Bayern Munich Manchester United FC Juventus German Bundesliga
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