As voted by ZDF viewers. Comments? No football player in the top three, is this surprising? 1. Michael Schumacher (Formel 1) 2. Birgit Fischer (Kanu) 3. Steffi Graf (Tennis) 4. Franz Beckenbauer (Fußball) 5. Boris Becker (Tennis) 6. Max Schmeling (Boxen) 7. Jan Ullrich (Rad) 8. Franziska van Almsick (Schwimmen) 9. Gerd Müller (Fußball) 10. Oliver Kahn (Fußball) 11. Michael Ballack (Fußball) 12. Dirk Nowitzki (Basketball) 13. Rudi Völler (Fußball) 14. Stefan Krtezschmar (Handball) 15. Fritz Walter (Fussball) 16. Juergen Klinsmann (Fussball) 17. Ludger Beerbaum (Reiten) 18. Sven Hannawald (Skispringen) 19. Katharina Witt (Eiskunstlauf) 20. Erich Zabel (Rad) More football players: 21. Uwe Seeler 27. Helmut Rahn 28. Birgit Prinz 29. Sepp Maier 47. Nia Kuenzer
How in the hell an effing race car driver ended up as the #1 athlete? What happened to you Germans? Can't produce an athlete without steroids?
Mathematics / Statistics is the reason. There are 7 Footballers under the first 20. That shows how popular football is and it shows, how many footballers are big stars. But as a teamsport with 11 winners for every great success for every generation, it divides the decision of the football supporters in a public poll like this.
Yes, I was also surprised. Between 50th and 100th I think. The vote was also about personality apparently (err that's why Schumacher won).
Good point. Still Birgit Fischer was a bit of a (positive *) surprise. * even more positive when she was still competing for East Germany. Sorry, bad joke.
Birgit Fischer is unique. She is obviously the most successful german athlet witht 8 Olympic Gold Medals, uncountable Worldchampionships, participation in 6 Olympic Games. Got gold at the age of 42?. So she earns to get much respect, even if her sport isn´t so mass media compatible. And she is the last famous GDR sportster who is still active so I think she got a lot of votes from the east.
Netzer is exactly Number 100. Here are the top 100 picks: http://www.zdf.de/ZDFde/download/0,1896,2001754,00.pdf
Where is Rummenigge? I thought he was in there as well, but I seem to have gone blind. Ah well, that's democracy for you. Like we saw when the Dutch voted Pim Fortuijn, a right wing politician, 2nd greatest Dutch person ever, in front of Erasmus, Rembrandt etc.
I am off the mark here in saying that Lothar Mattheus should be ranked a little bit higher (disregarding his personality ) Now there is a list for you --The top Worst (German) Football Personalities of all time. Add your suggestions
Maybe you start a thread, this deserves more attention... for me, only going back till 1982 1. Lothar Mattaeus 2. Andi Moeller 3. Toni Schumacher (but maybe I am overreacting to his bad foul in 1982) 4. Joerg Boehme 5. Oliver Kahn
Oh god, I forgot about super Mario Basler. The man who said, asked what he thought about Milosevic, that we shouldn't worry about what happened in the Balkans 50 years ago. And this was back in 1997. One of the world's best Weissbier drinkers. I miss him. I miss Effenberg too. That's what's going wrong in Bayern, too many nice guys now. How can you ever win the Champions League with so many nice people? Just not possible to have the goalkeeper carry the complete responsibility for being offensive. Look at Man United, they know what they're doing, spreading unpleasantness evenly over the pitch.
Maybe Gregoriak can find some statistics for us... Actually I think it might have been done in other form already, 'which player do you hate most'.