Karl-Heinz Rummenigge

Club career

Rummenigge was born in Lippstadt, North Rhine-Westphalia.

He joined Bayern Munich in 1974, coming from the Westphalian amateur side Borussia Lippstadt, for a transfer fee of c.€10,000. He immediately showed strength as a dribbler. His scoring qualities were initially insignificant, but would find improvement in later years, particularly after the arrival of coach Pal Csernai in 1979. In 1979–80, he scored 26 goals and became for the first time the Bundesliga's top striker, a feat he repeated in 1981 and 1984 with 29 and 26 goals, respectively.

With Bayern, he won the European Cup in 1975 and 1976. In 1975, he did not take part in the final of the competition, whilst in the year thereafter a glass of brandy sufficiently prepared the nervous Rummenigge to contribute to the defeat of AS Saint-Étienne. In the same year he became also part of the team that prevailed in the Intercontinental Cup finals against Cruzeiro EC from Belo Horizonte.

During the tenure of coach Pál Csernai, he developed an effective partnership with midfielder Paul Breitner. The duo was nicknamed ‘Breitnigge,’ a portmanteau coined by the German newspaper Bild.

The club, then often dubbed as "FC Breitnigge", won in this period the Bundesliga title in 1980 and 1981, and the DFB-Pokal in 1982 and 1984. A renewed triumph in the European Cup was denied, when the club lost the 1982 final narrowly against Aston Villa. In the season before Rummenigge was top-scorer in this competition with 6 goals.

His substantial contribution to the successes of the club and the Germany national football team found also expression in personal honours. In 1980, he was named German Footballer of the Year and in 1980–81 the European Footballer of the Year.

In 1984, aged 29, he was sold for a record fee of €5.7m to Inter Milan. Despite a notable beginning, in which he helped the team to compete until the end for the 1984–85 Scudetto, Rumenigge's career in Italy was mostly marred by injury problems. At the end of his contract in 1987, Rummenigge moved on to Swiss first division club Servette FC in Geneva, where he saw his career out. In his last season, 1988–89, he had his last success, becoming top scorer in the Swiss league with 24 goals.