On Thursday morning, police raided the home of former Germany and Bayern Munich star Franz Beckenbauer as prosecutors announced he is being investigated for fraud and money laundering.
Soccer has suffered many humiliating blows in recent months. This may be the worst of them. The others accused of similar crimes are functionaries and career climbers. We expect grubby behaviour from those sorts of people.
But this is one of the legends of the game accused of leveraging his position to steal money he did not need for something that did not really matter because … I suppose, because he could?
Excepting Brazil, no country has produced more names that ring out in soccer history than Germany. Until Thursday, Beckenbauer, 70, stood a full head above all of them.
For half a century, as a player, manager, administrator and wisest of wise men, Beckenbauer's authority and occasional edge infused a disorderly global obsession with an air of nobility. He was soccer's only real aristocrat.
"The strong one doesn't win," Beckenbauer once said. "The one that wins is strong."
It doesn't make a lot of sense unless you think of it in German terms. And then it explains everything about why no country is more predictably good at soccer (and a lot of other things) than that one.
Many of the true greats were errant students – Pele (the attention-deprived flibbertigibbet); Johan Cruyff (the too-smart-for-his-own-good back-talker); Diego Maradona (the one who spent all day, every day, in the principal's office). Beckenbauer was soccer's headmaster, already 70 when he was still 25.
Like the others, his manner of play redefined the game.
Unlike the others, Beckenbauer was not a disruptive force. He took something that was loose and tightened it. Most elite players disorganize a game. Beckenbauer took 11 disparate parts and arranged them into a unit. He was a tactical lesson come to life.
The other giants had their troubles conforming and, occasionally, obeying the law. Maradona once opened fire on a bunch of journalists standing outside his home. Since nobody died and Maradona is known to be a more-than-occasional lunatic, everyone found it amusing.
Generally speaking, geniuses are non-conformists. Beckenbauer was the exception to the rule. To find out right at the end that he may have been, in his way, the one who was pretending is a little heartbreaking.
In his role as a FIFA insider (even when he was outside), Beckenbauer had long been suspected of helping stitch up World Cup 2006 hosting duties for Germany. Aside from prosecutors and ethics obsessives, nobody seemed to care much about it. Beckenbauer had nebulously referred to "a mistake" in voting procedures, which sounded reasonable. When separated from the fact of dirty money, it seemed like a naughty act of patriotism.
The events of Thursday suggest something more sordid. Beckenbauer stands accused alongside three German sports bureaucrats: Wolfgang Niersbach, Theo Zwanziger and Horst Rudolf Schmidt (which sounds deliciously like the crew that took over Nakatomi Plaza or the engineering credits off a Kraftwerk album).
The precis – roughly $10-million (Canadian) earmarked for a gala that never took place was instead funnelled by those four men to buy World Cup votes.
It's not clear if any of the cash ended up in the pockets of the alleged conspirators. It hardly matters. What Beckenbauer is now accused of doing is buying himself the opportunity to play master of ceremonies for five weeks as Germany played host to the world. It's an act of towering narcissism, funded by stolen money. It could not be any worse had he kept the cash and buried it in his backyard.
To put it local terms with a figure of comparable standing, this would be a little like finding out that Jean Béliveau had spent his declining years signing stolen merchandise and selling it out the backdoor of the Forum.
If what prosecutors allege is true, Beckenbauer has not only ruined his own reputation. He's stained the memories of all the people who believed he represented something bigger than the game. It is an actual shame.
Of course, people are flawed and weak. We've all done stupid things for what we thought were the right reasons (or, at least, explicable ones). Could this not be one of those?
Perhaps, if it wasn't for what we now know about the sleazy culture of backhanders and generally accepted dishonesty that infected Sepp Blatter's reign as global soccer czar. This was Beckenbauer easing himself into the ooze because, hey, everyone else was doing it, too. It's the antithesis of the man several generations of devotees thought they knew.
Here is a giant accused of exchanging decades of hard-won international respect to become a garden-variety thief. What could be a more depressing comment on the state of the world? And for what, exactly?
That's what really drives people nuts when they hear about their betters debasing themselves for small treats or in order to relive the glory days. They've had more than most – enough moments to feast on forever. But they're still skulking around the table snatching at whatever's in reach, no matter how petty or small.
We want to believe these people are above that. Why else admire them? Few connected with any sport seemed so far above it as Beckenbauer.
But it appears he has proved no one is immune to greed. If convicted, all he has left to show for a long lifetime in the sport are his many trophies. I suspect he'd trade them all today for a chance to go back and make a different decision.
Cathal Kelly