“Toni” and Anpfiff: “It’s always the same,” begins perhaps the biggest scandal book in German football history. In 1987, FC idol Harald “Toni” Schumacher packed revelations into Anpfiff - and effectively packed himself out of the club and national team. Forget Uli Stein, Jimmy Hartwig or Stefan Effenberg: the mother of all football scandal books came from the pen of “de Tünn”.
Chapters with titles like “Rummenigge: Alone Against the Mafia”, “Injections and Sex” and “The Press: Armed with Pen and Roof Batten” thrilled an entire generation of football readers. At the DFB, one can imagine, there was little amusement. Team boss Franz Beckenbauer suspended the Köln keeper on the instructions of the presidency, something he later called his greatest mistake.
The 2-2 against Spain on 15 October 1986 became Schumacher’s final appearance for Germany. It probably hurt him almost as much that his own club also threw him out - on his birthday, of all days.