Jürgen Kalb may not have been the most famous Eintracht player, but the defender played a decisive role in the club’s maiden DFB Cup success.
Sepp Maier’s lost bet
The semi-final on 13 April 1974 saw FC Bayern Munich come to town and with the score level at 2-2 heading into the final stages, Bernd Hölzenbein strode into the opposing penalty area. The Eintracht legend was brought down in the box: penalty. Not only did the Bayern players remonstrate strongly with the referee, Sepp Maier even kicked the ball away – and not for the last time. Frankfurt coach Dietrich Weise had earmarked Jürgen Kalb to take any penalties, and suddenly Maier proposed a bet: “100 Deutschmarks says I save it.” Jürgen Kalb turned him down, but Roland Weidle took Meier by the hand and responded: “I’ll take you up on that.”
Eventually things settled down and Kalb stepped up: “I was lucky in fact, because Maier got a hand to it but it went in off the post.” That took the score to 3-2 in Frankfurt's favour virtually on the stroke of full-time. As the hosts celebrated, the visitors hurled abuse all the way down the tunnel – so much so that Roland Weidle decided to cash in on his little bet, as Kalb remembers with a smile: “At some point I watched it all back again and Hölzenbein was barged over, but I can see it from Bayern’s point of view a well. Not every ref would have given it.”
Extra-time win
Owing to the World Cup taking place in West Germany, the DFB Cup final had to be postponed until after the summer break and was played just before the new season. Eintracht were allocated around 20,000 tickets but the club managed to get hold of around 30,000 through other channels. After Gert Trinklein (40’) had put Frankfurt ahead, Ole Björnmose of Hamburg equalised (75’). That took things to extra time, with Hölzenbein (96’) and Kraus (115’) firing Eintracht to glory. Annoyingly for the sponsors, freshly-crowned World Cup winner Jürgen Grabowski was a little too eager to swap shirts at the end of the game and ended up wearing the wrong kit in all the official winners’ photos. A few years ago, ‘Grabi’ told the story that Campari, sponsors of Hamburg, sent him a crate of lager to say ‘thank you’. At the time, Grabowski described the cup win as “just as important as the World Cup win”.
