The East Germans of Aston Villa
The story of Stefan Beinlich and Matthias Breitkreutz in Birmingham
There’s no better explanation I can give for shutting down my football website than the fact that nobody has noticed, and that I knew they wouldn’t.
In order to (a) bring some of that work to a more appropriate platform and (b) give myself a bit of a breather after forty Beef Pastes, I’m going to dip into the archives for the next couple of weeks.
Such is the nature of trying to get football writing in front of people with brains these days, I know for a fact these articles were seen by essentially nobody. I’m no great backer of my own stuff, but I think they’re better than that at least.
First up, a Villa thing. Enjoy.
The East Germans of Aston Villa
Under the leaden skies of East Berlin an unbranded football thunks against a concrete wall and rebounds back to the feet of Paule. The year is 1984 and Paule is 13 years old. He sets the ball again, steps back, and strikes it once more.
Paule isn’t just a street footballer. He’s already been on the books of BFC Dynamo for years. Die Weinroten are closing in on their sixth consecutive national championship; by 1988 they will have won ten in a row, making them the most successful club in the history of football in the German Democratic Republic.
Dynamo Dresden will prevent an eleventh. In 1989, BFC Dynamo will win their seventh title in the fortieth season of the DDR-Oberliga and the last completed before the fall of the Berlin Wall. They’ll win it again in 1990 before yielding the honour of being East Germany’s last national champions to Hansa Rostock in 1991.
In later life Paule would become part of the furniture at the Rostock club in unified Germany, but he might never have played professionally. As he approaches his last days at school he will be diagnosed with cardiac arrhythmia and told he cannot play the game he’s been honing on the city streets for as long as he could kick a ball.
He will turn his attention to volleyball and training to become an electrician. Aged 17, as the balance of power shifts away from BFC’s first team, Paule will return to football and work his way into the senior game with SG Bergmann-Borsig, in effect a feeder club for the city’s top dogs.
Paule will make it as a professional player but he won’t take part in league football in united Germany until 1994. Instead, he’ll participate in a training camp in the Netherlands and catch the eye of the scout who will soon take him far away from Berlin along with Crivitz-born Matthias Breitkreutz, a Bergmann-Borsig team-mate eight months his senior.
In 1991, ‘Matze’ Breitkreutz and 19-year-old Paule – more commonly known in England as Stefan Beinlich – signed for Ron Atkinson and First Division side Aston Villa.
The two East German midfielders joined both Villa and English football in a time of upheaval and fluctuation. After losing Graham Taylor to the national team, Villa were cycling through managers as quickly as the Rolodex of larger-than-life chairman Doug Ellis would allow. All but one of Beinlich’s league appearances were not in the First Division of the Football League but in the new Premier League, inaugurated as the top flight of English football in 1992.
Breitkreutz’s football journey began at SG Dynamo-Schwerin, not far from home, before he moved to BFC Dynamo. There, he played a couple of times for the second team before dropping to Bergmann-Borsig, later to be joined by Beinlich.
Atkinson, who took them to Birmingham, would come to be frustrated by his East German duo. Together, he once told Beinlich, they would have been the perfect player. With Beinlich’s brain and Breitkreutz’s beautiful left foot, the mutant midfielder would have it all.
Sadly, the young pair never passed muster at Villa. After limited appearances in the First Division in their debut season in 1991/92, they also found themselves struggling for time on the pitch when they became the Premier League’s only founding German footballers.
Atkinson strengthened his midfield, adding 30-year-old Ray Houghton in a position where Beinlich and Breitkreutz needed a challenge like a hole in the head. The former was, at the time, a little lightweight, too physically weak for the English game by his own admission. The latter had potential and no shortage of ability but little appetite for the fight.
Breitkreutz was his own greatest saboteur. A young man who reportedly liked a drink and a flutter, he ended his career at 32 and became a healthcare professional in Augsburg. He later took responsibility for his shortcomings, namely a lack of professional ambition and unfulfilled potential.
Andreas Zachhuber, a coach who worked with Breitkreutz at Hansa Rostock after his time in England, told BILD that, “Matze was one of the most gifted footballers I've seen: technically excellent, good shot. If someone didn't know what to do with the ball, they always played it. He had the potential to become a national player. It's a shame that he didn't make enough of it.”
Regardless, 1992/93 was no time for a couple of green midfielders to try and make their mark at Villa. Atkinson was building an experienced team with immediate results in mind – Villa’s title charge and eventual second-placed finish proved him right in that regard – and Houghton, Garry Parker and Kevin Richardson were a formidable barrier to the Germans’ progress.
After limited involvement in the last season of the old First Division, they had to wait until December 1992 to escape Villa’s solid reserve side and play their first football in the Premier League. Breitkreutz got there first by a whisker, playing the last thirty minutes of a 1-1 draw at Manchester City. Beinlich replaced Cyrille Regis late in Villa’s infamous 3-0 Boxing Day defeat to Coventry City seven days later.
Beinlich came on again in a 5-1 win over Middlesbrough in January, and replaced Dwight Yorke in Villa’s 3-1 victory over Sheffield United. That game was Breitkreutz’s high point in a Villa shirt and the best performance either he or Beinlich ever managed at the club.
After his powerful free kick which set up a Paul McGrath goal, hitting the post with a corner kick and having at least one effort saved by the Blades goalkeeper, Breitkreutz was substituted and received a warm ovation from the Villa support.
Three days later both he and Beinlich played at The Dell in Villa’s customary defeat against Southampton – Beinlich hit and nearly split the crossbar – but Breitkreutz lost his place and didn’t play in the league again that season.
His compatriot played three more times off the bench before suffering the same fate. In a 2-0 win against Ipswich Town in February 1993, he watched from the dugout as Parker ambled up the field before teeing up Steve Staunton, whose cross teed up a flying Dwight Yorke header to open the scoring. Coming on to replace the Trinidad & Tobago forward for the last five minutes after his job had been completed sums up Beinlich’s role. Striker Dean Saunders scored an epic lob that day and title-hungry Villa were purring.
Atkinson’s entertainers ultimately fell short in 1992/93, collapsing after a heartbreaking home loss against Oldham Athletic and helpless as Manchester United extended the late-season gap to win the first Premier League title with an ease that gave no indication of the pressure both Villa and Norwich City had put them under throughout the season.
It was clear that Beinlich and Breitkreutz weren’t in Atkinson’s immediate plans. By covering injuries, suspensions and fixture pile-ups, they played in ten Premier League matches combined – almost always as substitutes.
Yet there was some affection for them. They were exotic – the Premier League was no more cosmopolitan than the First Division, and a pair of Germans remained a curiosity – and they had personality. Breitkreutz communicated his on the pitch and would expose his flaws later on, but Beinlich came to be regarded as a likeable and level-headed character.
Villa supporters were able to see the same attributes that so impressed the manager. Flashes of promise when they did get their chances were few and far between, but they weren’t non-existent.
Whether it was Beinlich’s piledriver attempts from distance or Breitkreutz’s fleeting ability to affect a match as he did against Sheffield United, there was a belief that these young players could amount to something in claret and blue.
1993/94 offered no substantial improvement in their fortunes in Birmingham. Villa brought in Andy Townsend and the great Gordon Cowans returned for his third and final spell at Villa Park.
Breitkreutz faded from view. He played only twice more in the Premier League, suffering 5-1 and 4-1 defeats against Newcastle United and Southampton respectively in the last knockings of the season.
It was in the heavy loss at Newcastle that Beinlich finally made an impact on behalf of the two Germans. Villa took the lead on Tyneside and it was Beinlich’s only Villa goal that put them ahead. Five goals later, it had already been forgotten.
In a 2018 interview with 11freunde he recalled the strike as – pardon the translation – “A real torch, volley from twenty metres. I got the ball put down, I tapped it again and then I hammered it into the corner.”
The reality was rather more modest, but it was a decent strike at the start of an appalling game for his team.
Beinlich played seven Premier League games in 1993/94, many of them starts and often for 90 minutes, but he and Breitkreutz were then sold to Hansa Rostock, returning to the eastern reaches of unified Germany with valuable experience under their belts.
Breitkreutz left Rostock in 1996 and spent a couple of seasons with Arminia Bielefeld before returning in 1998. By the time he left for 1. FC Saarbruecken in 2001, form and fitness were failing him. He added a few appearances there, and then at VfL Leipzig, before signing for Augsburg in 2003. He succumbed to injury and retired, soon to embrace his new life away from the game.
Beinlich spent three years at Hansa Rostock and scored 34 times in 101 league appearances for the club he would eventually call home. Along with Breitkreutz he was part of the team that got promoted into the top Bundesliga in their first season back in Germany. He scored 19 goals in two top-flight seasons for the club.
His next destination was Bayer Leverkusen, where he continued his growth and further enhanced his reputation between 1997 and 2000. In his last season there, Leverkusen finished second in the league behind FC Bayern. Only goal difference separated them and a defeat to SpVgg Unterhaching in the last game remains a sore topic to this day.
For the second and last time in his career, Beinlich scored more than ten league goals in a season. Bayern themselves reportedly had an interest in signing him. Instead, Beinlich was destined for Hertha BSC and Hamburger SV. Like Breitkreutz, his playing time was limited by injuries. Knee problems forced his retirement in 2008.
In all, Beinlich scored 56 goals in the German top flight and won five senior caps for Germany, all as a Leverkusen player. In 2010 Beinlich returned to Hansa Rostock as Director of Football, resigning two years later after the team’s dismal relegation into the third tier.
True love never dies, however. Beinlich and Hansa Rostock were reunited again in 2019, when he was appointed to run the club’s academy. He’s also been involved at a high level with a local athletics club in recent years.
He has, by all accounts, become quite a man. Paule, the affable kid from East Berlin, one of the Premier League’s premier Germans, is a leader and a developer of young footballers. Where Breitkreutz opted for another route, Beinlich chose and continues to choose football.
An unassuming time in England had a bigger effect on him than the other way round. He was, after all, a teenager at the beginning. As the end of his playing career approached, he considered it the most instructive job he’s ever had.
“Aston Villa was the most important,” he told Der Spiegel in 2004.
“When I went to England, to Birmingham in 1991, at the age of 19, where we were champions in the reserve league, I got the tools for my professional career. A young footballer can only develop further if there are enough games at a consistently high level. I even played sixteen games in the Premier League. During this time I also learned to manage everyday life independently.”
Beinlich enjoyed a respectable career, for which he credits his time at Villa. He was also a pioneer. Paule and Matze made the Premier League their home years before we saw even the earliest shoots of the colossal global beanstalk it is today.
In 1991, when the former East Germany itself was finding its way in a new post-unification world, two young men headed west in search of glory. It didn’t quite work out for them, but the path became well trodden. Beinlich and Breitkreutz helped make it happen.
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“In those circumstances, you are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem. Expanding their flagship tournament further across the globe sends the message – inadvertent or otherwise – that Fifa have abandoned the pretense of paying heed to the greatest threat to its game.”
Last week I discussed FIFA’s plans for the World Cup in 2030 with Daniel Storey of the i newspaper. One aspect we spoke about was the environmental impact, which Dan has covered beautifully in print.
Salty beef extracts
A good week, at last, to follow an SUFC (Unexpected Delirium)
6 ways to improve VAR and why none of them will work (i)
Union Berlin and the ‘miracle’ rise that has fans worried (i)
From thieves and mice to £160 tickets – Fulham’s loyal fans don’t deserve this treatment (i)
Protest and resist: fans in Scandinavia lead backlash against VAR (The Guardian)
The whole pyramid powers Premier League’s success and merits a fairer share (The Guardian)
Francis Lee obituary (The Guardian)
Dessert
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