Frank Mill is the name of a German footballer who played on the 2007 World Cup in Germany. He might not have been able to score, but his name has become popular across Germany and beyond. Find out more about this football player with an unfortunate moniker!
The “Frank Mill” is a German footballer who plays for the Bundesliga team TSG 1899 Hoffenheim. His name means failure, but he has never failed in his career.
In 1993-94, Frank Mill was in his last season with Dortmund.
Frank Mill must be reminiscing about Marty McFly, the protagonist from Back to the Future. He’s always getting brought back to the mid-1980s, no matter what he’s doing. To a certain date: August 9, 1986.
Mill was making his debut for Borussia Dortmund. He was played clean through just before halftime. Bayern Munich’s defense was split by one pass, and he found himself in front of an empty goal after dribbling past the goalie. In Germany, what followed next is known as the “miss of the century.”
Mill had been waiting much too long. He took an additional touch to calm himself with an open goal in front of him, just to the side of the six-yard box, postponing what seemed to be the inevitable. Mill lost his rhythm and the ball stuck up in his foot as the goalie came racing back, plunging in for a fruitless effort to block. He missed the post when he eventually did shot. The ball rebounded back to a Bayern defender who was ready to intercept it.
Even after 35 years, whenever someone in German football misses a golden opportunity, pundits are quick to bring up this tale. Reporters will contact him to get his viewpoint. The failure to score from an open goal is referred to as a ‘Mill.’ Over the last several years, he’s gotten a lot of inquiries about Timo Werner.
Mill, who is now 63, is often reminded of his most humiliating professional event. He approaches this from a philosophical standpoint. If he is properly questioned, he will not refuse to respond.
“I went to a local butcher’s store with my dear old buddy Matthias Herget, the former West German defender, some years ago,” he recalls.
“An elderly woman behind the counter wrapped our bread and sausages and exclaimed loudly, ‘Ah!’ as she lifted her eyes. ‘You nailed it!’
“Whenever a stranger yells my name and attempts to harass me on the street, I just refuse to respond.” But, in general, after all this time, I can finally laugh at myself.
“It was really insane. To get it over the line, I wanted to make the Bayern players appear silly. However, I outran the ball and lost possession. It was simply lying between my legs when it occurred…”
Mill’s mistake went viral in the 1980s when the scenario was shown on German television. Of course, it wasn’t immediately splashed all over the internet, but it dominated the tabloid media, and fans couldn’t stop talking about it.
It spread all throughout the globe even back then.
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Mill visited a buddy in San Francisco a few months after his miss. He’d ordered a burger and turned on the television in his Fairmont Hotel room. He discovered a channel that featured bizarre sports video.
“First, I watched a basketball player rip the hoop off while trying a dunk,” he recalls. “I chuckled as I chewed into my burger. And it was at that very time that I saw myself on the TV in Munich, hitting the post.”
Normally, such a failure would convert a professional football player – particularly a striker – into a reclusive figure who would begin to overthink his goal-scoring efforts. Mill is not one of them.
He was recognized for his outgoing nature throughout his career. Mill acquired his brazen tongue and conviviality from his father Bobby, who worked as a trash trader. He didn’t wear shin guards and often snatched the ball from goalkeepers as they were ready to kick it.
‘Mit allen Wassern gewaschen’, which literally translates to “washed with all waters,” is a German expression that might be used to characterize such a character. ‘To know every technique in the book’ might be a better translation. Mill’s Dortmund teammate Norbert Dickel, on the other hand, summed up his slyness well when he said, “He is washed with all wastewaters.”
As a striker, Mill was always self-assured, extroverted, and clinical. Between 1981 and 1996, he played 15 years in the Bundesliga, playing for Borussia Monchengladbach, Dortmund, and Fortuna Dusseldorf. He was a member of West Germany’s Olympic team in 1988 and the World Cup squad in 1990, but he did not play when Franz Beckenbauer’s side won the trophy in Italy, therefore he does not consider himself a world champion. In 656 career games, he scored 253 goals. Despite his short stature (5ft 9in), his ability to get off the ground allowed him to score a lot of headers.
But, in Mill’s opinion, his best success was winning the German Cup with Dortmund in 1989, three years after his miss against Bayern, when he scored one goal and added two assists in an incredible 4-1 victory against Werder Bremen.
When he looks back on the match preparations, he recalls an odd distraction.
“We used to practice in a lido on Fridays with Dortmund for many years, and we did the same thing the day before the cup final,” he adds. “It was a very different era.”
“Nudists utilized the grass throughout the summer. We moved our goals to a less congested place and played there since the surface was decent. So the nude sunbathers were at the rear of the lido, while we practiced for the cup final up front. I can’t claim that all of the rounds hit their intended targets.”
Mill has good memories of those days. He recalls locking himself and his Dortmund teammates in the cramped locker room and talking for hours over cake, coffee, and smokes. Or how, shortly before a friendly match, someone put a live rabbit in the team doctor’s case with the German national team. Andreas Brehme agreed to fabricate an early injury, and as the physio went on to the field to treat him, out popped the phony ailment.
At the 1988 Olympics, Frank Mill was a member of the German national team, which won bronze.
He’s also outspoken when it comes to a subject that many former international players wish to avoid: drug charges.
Toni Schumacher, a former West German goalkeeper, brought up the matter in his book Anpfiff (Kick-Off) in 1987. It alleged not just doping but also other scandals surrounding the national squad, including poker nights, prostitutes, and alcohol abuse. For a long time, no other player agreed with Schumacher that the usage of Captagon, a prohibited branded amphetamine presently manufactured in large amounts in Syriaexternal-link, was widespread in the 1980s Bundesliga.
“Strips of pills lay near the dressing room’s sink, and you could help yourself,” Mill adds. At the time, it was ‘in’. It was known by the physicians, the management, and everyone else. But no one mentioned it.
“It was taken by several athletes till they couldn’t walk any longer. You may not see the results right away, but it has a long-term effect on your body.”
Mill confesses to using Captagon once, but doesn’t specify which match.
“I scored twice in the game and couldn’t get tired after that, no matter what I did,” he adds.
“I lighted a candle that was put on a wooden shelf in the middle of the night at home. I wanted to see the repetition of Aktuelles Sportstudio [a highlights show similar to Match of the Day]. I eventually fell asleep, but I awoke just in time to put out the fire [caused by the candle on the shelf]. ‘Woah, you almost set yourself on fire,’ I thought to myself. As a result, I shied away from taking Captagon a second time.”
That was the second of two pivotal evenings for Mill, when he saw himself on TV. The first was in San Francisco, and the second, which was practically his last, was at home.
The German media will continue to phone him every time a golden opportunity is missed, but he has so much more to say about a generation of football that appears to exist on another planet.
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