Born on this day is our first signing under the Bosman rule, Thomas Helmer. Surprisingly, the outspoken German defender only featured twice for us, with rumours hinting that he expressed his criticism of Peter Reid's training methods which resulted in him barely playing for us.
Arminia Bielefeld were the team who gave him his start in football, in his first full season he played in the second division of German football. The club had just been relegated and he was placed in the squad that was about to embark on a promotion push back to the Bundesliga.
Even though Helmer netted five times in 35 appearances and had one of the better defensive records in the division, it wasn’t enough to gain promotion. His impressive performances did gain him an individual promotion to the Bundesliga, as he signed with German giants Borussia Dortmund.
He spent six years at Dortmund, winning a DFB-Pokal (German FA Cup) and the German Supercup (German Community Shield). In those six years he maintained his scoring habits, netting 16 times. More impressively he made 190 appearances for the club. You would think this puts him in good stead to be involved in modern club legend discussions for the German side and that would be true if he didn't leave in the way he did.
In 1992 Helmer wanted to join his arch rivals, Bayern Munich. Obviously BVB didn’t want to give up one of their best talents to anyone let alone their title rivals. So they decided to sell him to French side Olympique Lyonnais… who inevitably sold him to Munich just three months later.
Finally at Bayern, he shone once again. He was focused on his football and he was back to being one of the best in his role. He almost won the Euros as Germany were runners up in the 1992 tournament. Helmer started in the final but his side fell to a 2-0 defeat by the hands of a dangerous Danish side.
He carried on playing with Bayern and was part of one of the best Bayern Munich squads in the history of the club. They had dominated on home soil, winning seven trophies in his six years there. He won the Bundesliga three times, DFB-Pokal once taking his personal tally to two, DFB-Ligapokal twice, runners up in the UEFA Champions League and he also won the UEFA Cup which is now known as the Europa League. Funnily enough he called the Europa League a “cup of losers”, a completely different tournament to the one you won right, Tom?
The same year he won the UEFA Cup he also claimed probably his favourite trophy of all, the one he came so close to winning just four years prior.
It was 1996, everyone thought this was the year England were going to finally win something, until they ran into the villains Germany and their centurions at the back, one of them being Thomas Helmer. Germany beat England on penalties and went on to win the final and take the Euro trophy home.
When his contract was up with Bayern, he had many suitors and some of those were in the Premier League should he want a new challenge. The two main clubs trying for his signature were newly-promoted Sunderland, and Liverpool. He decided to snub Gérard Houllier and Liverpool to come to Wearside.
He later spoke on this decision: “I didn’t have the courage to go to Liverpool. At that point, I was a bit cowardly. The prospect of winning a few more titles was more important to me than adventure and money.”
Obviously Reidy wasn’t a fan of the German so it was strange we even signed him, many were saying the two had fallen out over training disputes and the manager said Helmer didn't have the legs anymore. The gaffer decided to loan the defender back to Germany and he ended up at Hertha Berlin. Helmer played 12 more games that season and scored a goal, even playing in the Champions League a few times before the season was up. We terminated his contract and he retired.
He remains as outspoken as ever and is regularly heard speaking about German football. Regardless of how his time went in Wearside, he goes down as one of the greats of German football and a serial winner too. If only he could have come a little sooner in his career we might have been praising him for things he did on Wearside, not Deutschland.
