By Aleko Likaj
Memorie.al / An unusual long-distance love story! To the limits of the unbelievable. But not at all unfamiliar. Rare for that time, but also with one of the most renowned figures in the world of football who left indelible marks in the magical game. Gerd Müller, one of the stars just beginning to shine in German football at that time, never imagined that, in the most isolated and hermetic country of the Balkans, he would meet an Albanian girl who not only shook up his life but also “destroyed” it.
The event has been mentioned several times in the German, English, and European press, among the stars of that era in the football of this country, but also in Albania. In fact, today there are still figures from the sports world and contemporaries of that time’s activities with “the Great Müller,” who confirm this story. Even in our media.
Although more than four decades have passed, the love story of the German footballer with a completely unknown Albanian girl, somewhere in the inner corridors of Hotel “Dajti,” continues to be mentioned even now. This time, a local newspaper in western France mentions the fact that; “The star of German football, the goal thief and real terror of opposing goals, was troubled by love for a girl from the East, whom he met right after stepping into the capital. This love was denied not by the newly acquainted girl, but by the communist state of that time!”
Gerd Müller, a very young footballer considered one of the talents of the future of Germany, arrived in Albania in 1967. It is not known why Helmut Schön, the great coach of the national team at that match, facing the humble Albanian team led by our great Loro Boriçi, did not activate Müller?! After two days at Hotel “Dajti,” where the German national team was accommodated, he managed to stay on the bench in that match.
But he was not sorry to be off the field. Perhaps there on the bench, while the ball moved in the spaces of the field between the two teams, he had the opportunity to experience another feeling, after the meeting with the Albanian girl, who immediately captured the heart of the young lad. Maybe her beauty and the charm of a proud girl made the star of the foreign team’s future suffer spiritually. Instead of thinking about schemes to pass the ball, finding its way into the net of the locals’ goal, he surely thought and wove plans and schemes simultaneously to ensure even a single moment with the girl who had now entered his dreams.
It is uncertain whether at that moment he had discovered this secret and shared it with others, his teammates, his friend Franz Beckenbauer, Netzer, or Overath, who were at the peak of their brilliance, making West Germany significant in the green field and a trophy-winning team. But the day after the match, he left, not so much troubled by the draw as by the “abandonment of the girl of his heart”!
Then it would take a full four years before he set foot on Albanian soil again. He eagerly awaited this moment. In 1971, West Germany returned to Albanian territory. This time without the great Schön. The team was complete and had very serious reinforcements to achieve its objective. Meanwhile, Gerd Müller had become a famous footballer worldwide, one of the most important in the strategy of the German team— the man of goals. The Albanian team, on the other hand, thought of him. For total neutralization.
One of our most notable defenders at the time, Bujar Canaj, was tasked with stopping Müller. In fact, there was a “biographical arrangement” in exchange for this afterward. This did not happen on the field. The “lost” Gerd Müller, who until the minutes where the game was heading towards the end in a draw, in a sprint on the left side of the goal, half-lying, deflected and changed the direction of the ball to hit the net. Perhaps to remind the Albanian girl, who was supposed to be in front of the screen, that he was a great footballer, and deserved a place in her shattered heart…!
After this, the German team returned to Hotel “Dajti” as victors. The protagonist was the man who had tried for an Albanian love, in the same place, with one of the girls from the staff. That evening, the hotel certainly could have reserved for the football-loving lover another magical moment, hidden from the “eagle-eyed” people (of the State Security) who monitored everything regarding foreigners. It is unknown whether the German’s story with the hotel girl had caught their attention until that point, but it is well-known that after the departure of the German team, the State Security and the then Minister of Internal Affairs had been informed about the romance of Gerd Müller, nine-time “Golden Shoe of Europe”!
This may have even become a topic of discussion among special individuals, high-ranking officials, or members of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Albanian Party of Labor, who oversaw the Ministry of Internal Affairs and State Security. The report needed to be comprehensive, covering all three days of the West German team’s stay in the internal areas of Hotel “Dajti,” along with the girl who served in that establishment. Perhaps it took just one moment to betray this silent and closed love, and afterward, investigations shed light on the relationship that had begun four years earlier.
As Müller was departing from Rinas, he felt spiritually unwell, even though he had given his teammates and team three precious points after leaving something of himself somewhere in the middle of Tirana. He had conquered the Albanian team and had been conquered by a girl, also Albanian! With this “wound” in his heart, he would then live through difficult days in his sentimental life. Meanwhile, his name had reached new heights of popularity in the world of football.
The “King” of goals, who destroyed teams and big names on the football field, lived with a “wound” in his heart that very few knew about. This intimacy was wearing him down and exhausting him. Like all the lovers in this miserable world, the German football giant lived in the past, reliving the moments he spent in secrecy at Hotel “Dajti,” in the center of the Albanian capital, one of the most isolated and poorest communist countries in the Balkans.
Often in the many interviews he gave indirectly about his secret and closed life, he emphasized that in Albania, women were beautiful. He repeated this several times, both in Tirana and later in Germany or in front of foreign media. There seemed to be a reason why he made this statement. But fate seemed to be punishing him. The German national team was no longer grouped with the Albanians. It was a matter of draw. Furthermore, none of the German teams playing in European leagues were facing teams from the country where he felt profoundly in love.
As he sensed that the end of his career was approaching, and after having played for a time on the distant continent across the Atlantic with American teams, he learned that the team ‘HJK Helsinki’, by draw, would face our ‘Flamurtari’ in the European Cup Winners’ Cup. He felt that he saw a light at the end of the tunnel of his love. This time he could not miss this chance. It was 1985 when the Albanian communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, had also died. But some of his close friends, who knew the plight of this classic lover, who, like football, had also made a deity out of this one, surely did not recommend this madness to him.
Gerd Müller, now determined in his scheme, immediately enters into attempts and manages to convince the leaders of the Finnish team to include him in their squad, to travel to Tirana. He was sure that the girl of his heart would be waiting for him there, even though he had never managed to contact her since that distant year when he last left Albanian soil. This was also due to the fact that she was now under multiple surveillance by the Albanian State Security. However, the sports press of the day in Europe, which scrutinized and published precisely the purpose of the visit of the West German football star to Albania, may have “burned the cards” in the hands of the ardent lover.
Surely, in Tirana, the non-arrival was orchestrated. He was already listed in the files of State Security, and someone “from above” had issued the fatal order. Meanwhile, his popularity throughout Albania had turned him into a myth. In the city of Durrës, an association bearing the name of the German legend had even been established. The state of that time, in complete agony, had likely made some kind of compromise with itself, allowing this society to be “legalized” under the name “Gerd Müller,” as if to tell him that he was “untainted” in Albania, and that his story had not even been documented.
This great footballer, who with the magic of his feet had captured the hearts and minds of thousands of Albanians, could not become, perhaps, even their son-in-law. Unlucky for both sides?! This was an enormous blow for the man of goals, even shocking and fatal. Afterward, he could not bear this loss, his lost love, and now without any hope of meeting again the girl who had shaken his youthful dreams, he turned to alcohol. He sought solace there. These were years of profound and powerful depression that, together with alcohol, completely destroyed and dismantled him as a person.
His friends were always by his side. “The Kaiser” Franz Beckenbauer later distanced himself by bringing him closer to his first love, the magical ball, as an advisor and specialist. He stayed in this role for many years. “Now that he has approached his third age, he has returned as a ‘gentle and attentive lamb, even silent,'” wrote the European press a few years ago, which has never spared any gossip columns in downtown Tirana. But who is the girl who transformed him and shattered his youthful dreams, causing the football legend Gerd Müller to suffer?
The chronicles that followed this entire love story would refer to her as “Hojna,” the beautiful Albanian from Hotel “Dajti.” Meanwhile, former staff members of the hotel, the residence for foreigners at that time, do not acknowledge having known her by this name, even though the story was whispered in closed spaces among footballers and the Albanian national team. But the great Müller introduced her by the name he knew and met in 1967, and four years later. Could the girl have deceived him about her true name out of fear?
Or perhaps the star of the West German national team presented her with this name for the same reason, wanting to keep her secret and engraved within the walls of his heart? The dilemmas remain to be resolved. In this context, it is also possible that Müller’s “girlfriend” may have just been a secret operative of the Albanian State Security, one of those who were overly present in this environment, monitoring foreigners like through the eye of a needle, aiming to allure the young man from Northern Europe, as the talent of the future.
Even though we should not be skeptical about the last point, the chances are there! This would be more than offensive for a World Star like him! It is unclear how this love saga continued between Gerd Müller and the Albanian hotel worker after many years, when the walls fell and communism collapsed like a paper dinosaur. At least this time, nothing could hinder the hearts connected in a love that was almost eternal. Did Müller come and set foot on Albanian soil again, in search of what he had lost 43 years earlier?
At least to learn the truth, even if it was bitter. But he has not spoken out since. Even more so to discuss his past life. This remains an enigma. The rest is already known. They can be found in the press of the time, even in recent years. The French newspaper “Sud Ouest” has once again reaffirmed these hidden stories of the Great Gerd Müller recently, but without specifying the location of the girl of his troubled dreams and the fluid love of the German football legend, who passed away at the age of 75 from Alzheimer’s disease on August 16, 2021, from which he had suffered for more than ten years. Memorie.al
