Former Bayern, Barca coach Lattek dies at age 80
By Karolos Grohmann
BERLIN (Reuters) - Udo Lattek, the most successful Bundesliga coach of all time and one of a select few managers to win all three major European club competitions, has died at the age of 80.
Lattek, who helped catapult Bayern Munich to the top of European football in the 1970s and coached Borussia Moenchengladbach and Barcelona among others, passed away in a nursing home.
He had suffered a series of strokes had been treated for Parkinson's disease.
"Udo Lattek was not only the most successful coach in Bundesliga history," German Football Association President Wolfgang Niersbach said in a statement on Wednesday.
"Udo Lattek was already during his lifetime a legend and we will miss him."
Lattek holds the record for most Bundesliga titles with eight wins, six with Bayern and two with Gladbach.
Lattek took over Bayern in 1970 after a recommendation from then player Franz Beckenbauer, having no previous club coaching experience but a five-year stint as Germany assistant coach.
He immediately led them to three consecutive league titles, a German Cup and the first of three successive European Cups in 1975.
He took over Moenchengladbach for four years and again enjoyed instant success with two championships and a UEFA Cup achieved through an exciting brand of football.
He moved to Barcelona in 1981 where he won the Cup winners' Cup in 1982 and the King's Cup, completing his triple crown of European titles with three different teams and coaching Argentine great Diego Maradona.
He returned to Bayern in 1983 and went on to win another two league title and two German Cups before stints at Cologne and Schalke 04.
"Udo Lattek was one of the most successful German coaches," said Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. "For decades he was also one of the big personalities of the sport, nationally and internationally."
"We have lost one of the big men of Bayern Munich, a personal supporter and a friend," Rummenigge said.
Lattek briefly came out of retirement in 2000 to help Dortmund avoid relegation in the last three games of the season.
Outspoken and always with a dry sense of humour in his view of the way the game was played these days, Lattek remained a household name, spending 16 years as a commentator on Germany's popular Sunday morning football show "Doppelpass".
(Editing by Ed Osmond)
