He was the legendary Manchester City goalkeeper who helped to take his group to victory in the 1956 FA Cup very last, famously playing on even after he broke his neck inside the remaining 17 mins. Decades later, Bert Trautmann anticipated the very best of standards each on and staled the pitch. He chastised a number of his successors for not dressing accurately at a respectable reception and criticized the eye-watering charges earned via the lovely sport’s largest stars, his son has recalled. Mark Trautmann, fifty-eight, said that his father, who turned into “always immaculately became out,” turned into dismayed when some of Manchester City’s gamers arrived at a charity occasion in jeans and T-shirts, telling them: “You constitute the membership, you have got widespread to keep.”
His son remembers joking with him: “ ‘Dad, their denim probably price greater than your suit.’ He said: ‘That’s now not the factor; they’re representing the club.’ That’s in which times have changed.” Mark also recalled his father’s bewilderment over the wages earned via current stars: “[He’d say], ‘I bet you want I was gambling now …’ He became only on approximately £eleven per week. He handiest got £15, I assume, for the very last … When they weren’t gambling, the pay went down.” In 2010, Manchester City striker Carlos Tevez reportedly earned more than £250,000 per week, making him the first £1 million-a-month footballer.
Trautmann’s son spoke to The Sunday Telegraph ahead of ultimate week’s gold standard of The Keeper, a characteristic movie in which his father – who died in 2013 – is played by David Kross, who starred in Stephen Daldry’s Oscar-nominated The Reader. The movie, launched in cinemas on April five, tells the outstanding tale of a former Nazi paratrooper who changed into presented the Iron Cross for bravery before being captured through the British and becoming a hero of English soccer. Considered one of the best-ever goalkeepers, he was respected for his acrobatic athleticism.
The film’s writer-director, Marcus Rosenmuller, described it as a story of reconciliation: “The former enemy who will become the hero of a state.” Trautmann overcame deep resentment to his signing by Manchester City in 1949, most effective four years after the battle. Former servicemen and Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany were among hundreds who took to the streets to protest in opposition to the signing of a “Nazi,” who fought for Germany at the Russian front and Western Europe.
Trautmann becomes an ardent member of the Hitler Youth, later educating its recruits, and witnessing a massacre of civilians by way of SS loss of life squads. Manchester was closely bombed in the course of the warfare. But the metropolis’s communal rabbi, Alexander Altmann, who himself fled the Nazis, argued that a character has to now not be punished for his united states of America’s sins. Trautmann married an Englishwoman, Margaret Friar, and in the end, secured a place in English football folklore. In 2004, the Queen presented him the OBE for his commitment to the game and his determination to Anglo-German relations.
Chris Curling, the producer of The Keeper, said: “It is a story approximately an ex-Nazi and a younger British woman and the obstacles they have to triumph over of their life collectively – him coming to phrases with what Hitler and the Nazis did; she overcoming the bias of her buddies and the feelings of her dad and mom about her marrying an ex-Nazi.” Trautmann as soon as recalled in an interview: “Hitler’s changed into a dictatorial regime. You got your orders, and you accompanied them. If you didn’t, you had been shot.” He knew that a film changed into being deliberate at some stage in his lifetime.
In 2009, he spent every week being interviewed using Rosenmuller, who sensed his “shame” over Germany’s wartime beyond. Mark Trautmann, a former RAF vehicle technician, said that his father turned into reluctant to speak approximately the battle: “One of my remaining excursions become at a German base. I become accommodated in residence with my circle of relatives in Weeze in 1996 … [My father] said, ‘It’s quite ironic. Nationalism supposed little to him. His son said: “If he ever watched a game on tv, I’d say to him, ‘Who would you need to win?’ When he was captured, he turned into kept at Weeze.”
He’d say, ‘I don’t care who wins, so long as I watch an awesome soccer recreation.’” It changed into perhaps his army training, Mark believes, that helped his father as a sportsman. He defined him as a modest man whose “feet had been firmly at the floor,” playing down his 1956 victory and his bravery over his damaged neck: “Because of the adrenalin in his frame, he blocked the pain out … He stated he carried on [as] he notion it became a sprain. He didn’t recognize how critical it became at all.” Mark did no longer inherit his father’s footballing prowess. However, he will never neglect their “knockabout in the returned lawn” with a ball.
