Earlier this year, Toni Kroos recently signed a contract extension with Real Madrid, but the Merengues are no strangers to dashing German midfielders. After all, once upon a time they poached Bernd Schuster from Barcelona to the chagrin of cules everywhere. A decade before Bernd, though, another West German arrived in Madrid and set the town aflame: Gunter Netzer.
The dashing blondie lasted only a short time in Spain, but left an indelible mark.
Gunter won league titles at his first pro club Borussia Monchengladbach and, of course, Real Madrid. Still, what set him apart was this: he was a mess of contradictions. He combined traits we normally only see in opposite players. For example, in a single play, he could get the ball at his own eighteen yard box, turn, dribble sixty yards, and, in full gallop, thread a perfect pass between the lines.
In that one play, he combined the deep-lying preferences of Pirlo, the bull run of a Robson, and the soft attacking touch of Kaka. In modern football, we are used to three clear roles in the center of the park: a holding midfielder, a passing midfielder, and a support midfielder that plays off the striker in the attack. Netzer, though, played all those positions… often at once.
The same is true for his skillset. Some players, like Ricardo Quaresma, dribble because they can’t really pass that well. They lack vision and/or timing. Other players pass because they can’t pull off a move. Netzer could and did do both. He could skin a defender like Pablo Aimar, but also thread in that final slide rule pass like Riquelme. Go ahead and drool over the following highlight video: