BERLIN: Germany’s most successful domestic football coach Udo Lattek, who steered Bayern Munich to their first European Cup triumph in 1974, is suffering from Parkinson’s disease, according to reports yesterday.
Lattek lifted a total of 16 titles in a coaching career spanning three decades where he worked at Barcelona, Bayern, Borussia Moenchengladbach, Schalke, Cologne and Borussia Dortmund.
The 78-year-old won a total of eight German league titles, six with Bayern and two with Moenchengladbach, and was Germany’s assistant coach at the 1966 World Cup, when they lost the final 4-2 to England at Wembley. He steered Bayern to the European Cup in 1974, their first of three back-to-back titles, before joining Borussia Moenchengladbach, where he won the 1976 and 1977 Bundesliga titles.
He also won the 1982 European Cup Winners’ Cup with Barcelona, as well as the 1983 Copa del Ray, before returning to the Bundesliga and eventually retired from coaching in 2000.
“My husband has Parkinson’s. If my Udo has been lying down for a few days, then he normally needs a wheelchair,” his wife Hildegard told German daily Bild. AFP
