While
watching Sebastian Schweinsteiger chew out Mezit Özil for failing to put
Germany 8-0 up against Brazil in the last minute of the World Cup semi-final
(Brazil immediately counter-attacked and scored), I was reminded of Karl-Heinz
Granitza, the Chicago Sting's prolific, left-footed German striker from
1978-84. Granitza not only scored 128 goals in 199 games for the Sting, making
him the North American Soccer League’s third all-time leading scorer behind
Giorgio Chinaglia (193) and Alan Willey (129). He was also notorious for yelling at his team-mates whenever they made an error.
"I thought he had a great left foot," says former team-mate Don Droege, "but he was an asshole. He was one of those guys who I thought treated the
American players like a piece of shit." Ex-Hibernian defender Derek Spalding
says, "Granitza was the type of guy who could demoralise younger players. With
him, you had to know how to handle him. I knew how to handle the guy. He
watched who he gave it to. If he went after you and you turned round and
snapped back at him, he didn't like that."
 |
| Granitza (12): "I see someone make a mistake, I go crazy." |
American defender Tim Twellman, though,
had no problems playing with someone as pushy as Granitza, and doesn’t think the
German especially picked on Americans – he faulted everyone. "He didn’t have a
lot of respect for any player, no matter what nationality they were," says
Twellman. "He demanded perfection, which helped you play better. The first game
I ever played with him, and they put me in at half-time, I hit a ball in to
Granitza and he just let it go. He said, I wanted the ball to my left foot,
and I was like, Really? He was pretty much laying out the groundwork for who
was boss. It [Chicago] was not an easy place to play, but it helped you get
better because it pushed you so hard. I don’t think that was a bad thing at
all. We were all playing for our livelihoods."
Back in 1981, Granitza defended himself in
similar terms. "I see just one way for the team, winning, and when I am on the
field and see someone make a mistake, then I go crazy," he said in Soccer
Digest magazine. "I'm a crazy soccer guy maybe because always I push. If we're
winning 9-1, I'm pushing everyone because I want more. In the indoor [league],
I would go crazy sometimes when we would miss so many opportunities. I know
people would wonder why, but it is no good to miss opportunities. This becomes
so important later. In every situation, you must try to the last second."
It's this quote especially that makes me
think of Schweinsteiger and Özil. Schweinsteiger wasn’t bothered about notching
up an eighth goal. Instead he was saying to Özil: Do that in the final and it
could cost us the World Cup. You fluff an easy chance, then the other team runs
down the other end and scores on a counter-attack. In my view, Özil had his
best game of the tournament in the final, and that could well have been down to
Schweinsteiger's relentless professionalism.
"People must understand that sometimes my
crazy style on the field is a winning style," Granitza went on. "I am fair
during the games. It is only because I want us to win so bad and for everyone
to play good that I sometimes get mad. Many times we fight among ourselves in
the game and in practices, but it is only between ourselves and we always talk
things over afterward. Everyone knows I always give credit to the players who
make the good plays."
We've all played with men like Granitza –
it's not just in the professional game that you come across this sort of
player. You answer a late call to fill in for a short-handed team playing what
you thought was a casual friendly, and five minutes in you find yourself being
yelled at by some red-faced psycho for failing to spot his run 40
yards ahead of you. There are two ways to react. Either you tell him to fuck
off and ignore him for the rest of the 90 minutes, or raise your game to prove
that you're worthy of playing in the same team (depending on my mood, I’ve done
both, but usually try and opt for the latter).
Granitza was the kind of player who proves that
many Europeans did not just come to the NASL to relax, take the family to Disneyland,
and then fly home after a year or two with a wad of dollars. His unstinting
will to win was nurtured at Chicago under German-American coach Willy Roy, who
also signed Granitza's compatriots Arno Steffenhagen, Peter Ingo and Horst
Blankenburg. The Sting were NASL champions in 1981 and 1984 in an era when the
West German national team won, or came close to winning, numerous titles. That
spirit has been revived by the current German team, exemplified by the tireless
Schweinsteiger, who was most people's choice for Man of the Match against
Argentina in the World Cup final last weekend.
Had Özil forgotten about Schweinsteiger's
verbal mauling by the time they lifted the World Cup on Sunday evening? If he
hadn't, he probably no longer cared, or was even grateful for the little pep
talk (while mentally making a note to sit next to someone else on the flight
home). You can also be sure that when the Chicago Sting players were celebrating
their Soccer Bowl victories in the early 1980s, they still did not exactly love
Karl-Heinz Granitza. They would have known, though, that he provided a vital
ingredient to achieving success at the highest level – being an asshole.
[Sources: author interviews; Soccer Digest, September 1981]
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