Christoph Daum is dead. © APA/dpa / Bernd Thissen

Germany's cult coach Christoph Daum is dead

Christoph Daum is dead. After a long battle with cancer, he "died peacefully surrounded by his family," the family told the German Press Agency.

August 25, 2024

From: dpa/det

He would never have said it publicly, but Christoph Daum has been anything but well in recent months. There were nights when he could hardly sleep. Days when he lacked the strength to do the simplest things. The chemotherapy drained the former champion trainer's seemingly limitless energy bit by bit.

Nevertheless, he kept standing in front of every microphone and said something like: "I'll keep fighting." Until the very end. On Saturday, the former loudspeaker of the Bundesliga died of cancer. His family told the German Press Agency. Daum was 70 years old.

Daum died at the age of 70. © AFP / INA FASSBENDER

"Christoph Daum passed away peacefully surrounded by his family on August 24th as a result of his serious cancer," the statement said. Daum had already spent the past few days at his Cologne residence with his family and had not recently appeared in public.

Fighting cancer for two years

He had been battling lung cancer since the fall of 2022. First he withdrew from the public eye, but shortly afterwards the old Daum came back into the light: he gave interview after interview, appeared on talk shows or appeared in podcasts. "Cancer chose the wrong body," was his core message. Daum wanted to encourage other people with his fighting spirit.

Christoph Daum is considered a cult coach. © BELGA / VIRGINIE LEFOUR

His struggle with cancer was symbolic of his entire life. Even as a child, he picked fights with classmates who were actually much bigger and stronger than the skinny boy from Duisburg. As a young and still unknown coach of 1. FC Köln, he unexpectedly issued a challenge to the great FC Bayern and its manager Uli Hoeneß - and almost toppled the Bundesliga dominator. Even in his later life, no challenge was too big for Daum.

Cocaine scandal cost Daum his job as national coach

But the higher he aimed, the deeper he fell. Shortly after his first Bundesliga championship with VfB Stuttgart in 1992, he lost the chance to qualify for the Champions League due to a substitution error. To this day, he is one of the best coaches in the history of Bayer Leverkusen, but the legendary cocaine scandal in 2000 prevented him from being appointed national coach, which had already been a certainty.

But Daum came back. Again and again. He won more titles in Austria and Turkey, led 1. FC Cologne back into the Bundesliga and kept them there. And over and over again during his eventful life he said these sentences: "You can fall down. It doesn't matter how often you fall down. You just have to keep getting up." It was cancer that stopped him from standing still.