The cocaine case cost Daum dear

But the higher he aimed, the deeper he fell. Shortly after his first Bundesliga title with VfB Stuttgart in 1992, he missed out on UEFA Champions League qualification due to a substitution error.

As one of the best managers in Bayer Leverkusen's history to date, the legendary cocaine case in 2000 prevented his already secure job as national team manager.

But Daum is back. Again and again. He won further titles in Austria and Turkey, led 1. FC Köln back to the Bundesliga and kept them there. And he said these sentences over and over again throughout his adventurous life: "You can fall. It doesn't matter how often you fall. You just have to keep getting back up." Only cancer prevented him from stopping.

Daum never complained

By the end, his comrades were impressed by Daum's fighting spirit. In October 2023, Daum swayed to the music of "Höhner" with many of them at his 70th birthday party in a Cologne restaurant. Among those present were former world-class player Michael Ballack and DFB sporting director Rudi Völler. Even then, Daum's body was scarred by cancer. He never complained about it.

It's "unbelievable how Christoph uses his popularity to highlight his serious illness and try to give people with the same fate a little hope," said Völler, who once worked as sporting director at Leverkusen with coach Daum. Ballack's former player stressed that Daum was "a role model for a lot of people, even in these difficult times".

Public reconciliation with Hoeneß

In many people's eyes, the cancer also changed the image they had of Daum until then. Because of his biography, Daum was either respected or despised, there was hardly anything in between. His handling of the disease won him sympathy beyond the confines of sports. Even his former longtime nemesis, Uli Hoennes, publicly reconciled with Daum and appeared on camera with him as part of a television documentary.

And no matter how you remember Daum: as a joker, a provocateur, a motivational artist, a messiah, a quasi-national coach or a permanent runner-up with Leverkusen - there was never a dull moment with him. "Others raise their children bilingually, I raise them with both feet," he once said. Or: "The difference between good and great is often just a toe." It is not only proposals like these that will be missing from German football in the future.