The AfD wants to appoint Thomas Berthold as its candidate for the federal presidential election this Saturday. The 1990 soccer world champion, once a tough defender with a strong self-image (“As a professional, you have to be an egoist”), will not hold the position. The nomination has a more symbolic meaning, but is still noteworthy. Berthold is one of the first celebrities to be so clearly associated with the AfD. Who is the man? And what did he do after his football career?
Berthold, born in Hanau, Hesse in 1964, celebrated great sporting success on the football field. He went to three World Cups, played 18 games in these tournaments and was in the starting line-up in all seven tournament games in Germany's 1990 World Cup triumph in Italy. Franz Beckenbauer always relied on him as DFB team boss. As a defender, Berthold completed a total of 62 international matches.
For a long time, Berthold was the most attractive figure among top German footballers. He was considered arrogant, casual and careless.
After a critical interview in which, among other things, he accused the then national coach Berti Vogts of making personnel mistakes at the unsuccessful World Cup in the USA, his time in the national team was over at the end of 1994.
“Early retiree” at FC Bayern
Berthold was also once retired by coach Erich Ribbeck at FC Bayern. He sat in the stands for a long time in the 1992/93 season. The club's treasurer called Berthold the "highest paid golfer after Bernhard Langer". Titles such as “Early Retirement” (“FR”) and “Ladenlager” (“SZ”) were circulating in the press. Berthold later took a sharp stand against his former club. “For me, Thomas Berthold died,” complained then-Bayern manager Uli Hoeneß afterwards.
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Like some of his world champion colleagues, Berthold, who graduated from high school in 1983, failed in his attempt to have a great career as a manager in the professional business after his playing days ended. As a manager, he only worked temporarily at Fortuna Düsseldorf and was able to leave little impression. The plan to take over the chairmanship of the supervisory board at VfB Stuttgart in 2019 (with the club he won the DFB Cup in 1997) did not work out.
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Among other things, Berthold promoted organic coconut products, abstained from eating meat (“I stopped eating meat because the suffering of the slaughtered animals is so unbelievably great”; quote from 2015) and was active as an expert on TV for several years, including on Sport1-Doppelpass, on Eurosport and on ZDF.
Appearances at Querdenker demos
And political? In 1999, Berthold described Jan van Helsing's “Secret Societies and their Power in the 20th Century” as his favorite book. The author is known for anti-Semitic conspiracy stories. The book was indexed in 1996 for incitement to hatred.
In 2020, Berthold appeared at lateral thinker demonstrations, where he stated that his trust in the political leadership had reached “below zero”. In 2022, he and his wife said they moved to Switzerland to protest against the Corona measures; a return was unimaginable, he later said.
Most recently, in a conversation with the blog "Nachdenkseiten" he called Germany the "servant" of the USA: "On top of that, people are distracted with gender, 'fights' against the right, the climate and other topics. That's why I recommend digital detox and switching your own brain back on."
