The legendary coach Tschik Cajkovski once said: “There are big players who can do it and thin ones who can’t. Ettmayer is a player who just has to play.” The Austrian was not only a gifted footballer – but also a brilliant entertainer. Now “Buffy” has died at the age of 76.
Buffy Ettmayer’s sayings were legendary – and he kept his “cheeky snout” throughout his life. When he was asked about today’s generation of footballers, Ettmayer said: “Anyone who hits a stationary bus with the ball gets three million euros. If the bus is moving, it’s even five million.” Not only was the Austrian able to handle the ball fantastically, he also recognized early in his career what is important in addition to goals and victories in professional sports: “Sepp Maier, Ente Lippens and I – we are critters. And people want have something to laugh about in football.”
The former Bundesliga star mastered the keyboard of entertainment like no other. And his heart for entertainment also helped him humorously deal with his big vice and problem – food and weight. Because even after the end of his career, Johann Ettmayer continued to have a good time – and actually couldn’t help it: “What should I do? I have such terribly crooked compartments in my fridge at home. When I get up at night and open the door , the sausage rolls just slide towards me by themselves.”
Almost the entire football life of the player Johann Ettmayer, whom everyone just called “Buffy”, was dominated by one topic: his weight. No wonder, because “Buffy” means fat in Czech. A nickname that his former coach Leopold Stasny gave him. For a long time Ettmayer fought against the image of the sluggish professional, but at some point he had enough and verbally went on the offensive: “I’ll always have a big butt, and I just have to live with the reputation that I can’t run and fight. “
Ettmayer begins to ponder
Ettmayer was actually one of the quickest: Before the 1974/75 season he ran a late hour race over 100 meters against the “fast policeman” Heinz Stickel. Ettmayer, who always seemed a bit plump, picked up the bonus of 50 marks in an excellent time. After 12.3 seconds he crossed the finish line.
But as good as the start of the season was back then, it continued to be bad. The season became Ettmayer’s personal debacle. After a spectacular 5: 5 at Eintracht Frankfurt, VfB coach Hermann Eppenhoff addressed his star, who was banished to the stands: “Even if Ettmayer played so well – only if he put in the effort that all my players showed today, he will be fully accepted again by the audience, the press, the team and me!”
Ettmayer was angry – and started to ponder. He thought, what would he give if he could only play somewhere else right now? For example in Cologne, where coach Tschik Cajkovski said about him at the time: “There are big players who can do it and thin ones who can’t. Ettmayer is a player who just has to play.” An opinion that the Austrian shared, of course: “I don’t have a revue body, but I can play football. But I know a lot of players who have a revue body and can’t do it!”
He saw his role a bit differently anyway: “I’m probably predestined to put on a show, but I don’t want to play the ‘King’ at all.” And summed up in one sentence: “I’m not an athlete, I’m a footballer.” When he suddenly stopped playing regularly during this difficult time around 1975, he quipped wittily: “I don’t want to be on the bench, I can do that on my balcony too.” Ettmayer just wanted to have fun with football.
The images from the cine camera
In Hamburg he once had his trainer take to the skies. When Kuno Klötzer was lying on the massage bench, Buffy pushed her up with the coach. His comment: “See, coach, how good I am rightly?” And when Klötzer didn’t really want to see that, Ettmayer let the air out of Klötzer’s bicycle tires and stole his bicycle pump. The coach had to run home. When Ettmayer still wasn’t playing, he asked Klötzer why. And Klötzer replied: “Because I won’t put you up!”
What made Ettmayer so popular with the public, apart from his goals, were his sayings. Although he was size 43, he always wore his football boots two sizes smaller: “I always wanted to have a condom on my feet, otherwise you wouldn’t feel anything.” And when his coach Albert Sing said to him at VfB: “There are pictures where you were thinner,” Ettmayer countered humorously: “They were probably made with a cine camera!”
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Ettmayer had a strange relationship with Sing anyway. When the new trainer came to VfB, he prescribed singing therapy for his protégés at the training camp in Origlio in the spring of 1975. Every evening in Switzerland, songs were belted out until the beams buckled. The professionals under Sing’s command had to sing songs like “Listen, what’s coming in from outside?”
The “Jumbo Jet from Stuttgart”
German songs and old voyage songs were projected onto the wall with a slide projector. Pranksters also saw in the weird tones a possible form of fighting opponents: singing they should be put to flight. And the new VfB coach had another surprise in store for him. There were 20 pocket knives in the trunk for the Stuttgart players. Ettmayer: “We had to sharpen and trowel sticks, which means throwing the sticks into the ground as hard as possible. After two days we were able to trowel, but we hadn’t seen a ball!” This was the first time that Sing clashed with his Austrian star player.
From there it went in quick succession. Albert Sing: “I will challenge Ettmayer every day, even insult him if it’s for the benefit of VfB Stuttgart. It’s different privately. If I were to go out with a player, for example, it would only be Ettmayer.” Ettmayer replied: “But I wouldn’t date him!” At that time Ettmayer said: “I don’t hit a ball anymore, but I can sing very well and already have a preliminary contract with the Fischerchorn.” The Swabian newspapers wrote about “Buffy, the jumbo jet from Stuttgart”.
They meant well, but Ettmayer was fed up: “If I play well, then I’ll lose weight. If I play badly, then I’ll gain weight.” He longed for change and switched to HSV. But when he arrived in the Hanseatic city, he soon had a feeling that things wouldn’t get any better here either: “When I get on a plane in Stuttgart and think that I have to get out again in Hamburg, then I always get hair loss.”
Above all, he still couldn’t stand the stiff breeze in the Hanseatic city even after a few months. And to show his friends in Swabia how bad it was in Hamburg with the rough wind, he tried to explain it to them with an example from his old homeland: “In the Volksparkstadion I have to cut the ball in the Cannstatt curve so that it in which Untertürkheimer comes out.”
Again and again the question about the scales
Ettmayer found it difficult to bite through at the time. He once said: “Sliding tackles until you get a calloused skin on your thighs was never my motto”. He didn’t just stand around in the area, but it happened that his opponent ran past him and he thought: “Best regards and make something of it!”
The 10,000. The Bundesliga goal that Buffy Ettmayer scored with VfB Stuttgart in the game against Eintracht Frankfurt on January 26, 1974, he once described in his incomparable way: “I spit out on the left, right into the bow. The goalie needed the ball don’t get out of the gate, he came out alone because of the sheer force.”
His ample weight and talking about it also haunted him after his career as a Bundesliga professional: “Last week I was still a guinea pig, now I look like a pig. The reason: I’ve gained 200 grams.” When asked by a journalist whether he had already been on the scales that morning, Ettmayer replied: “Not out of protest. Because I’m still one of the fastest from zero to one hundred – in terms of kilos.” The journalist asked: “But do you know your current weight?” Ettmayer: “No, it doesn’t help either. I want to lose weight 365 times a year, but on January 1st I always notice that something has come up again.” Another time he said: “Today, when I step on a scale, it immediately says: ‘Please don’t use it in groups!'”
The Austrian Football Association wrote in its obituary: “Ettmayer was not only known and loved for his tricky game, but also for his legendary humor.” One of the Bundesliga’s greatest entertainers has died at the age of 76. But Johann “Buffy” Ettmayer will never be forgotten!
