Uwe Seeler

Club career

Seeler followed in his father's footsteps as a player for Hamburger SV, making his first team debut in 1954 in a DFB-Pokal match, aged just under 18, scoring four goals (8–2 vs. Holstein Kiel). In later years, despite tempting offers from Italian and Spanish clubs, he remained loyal to Hamburg, working on a second career as a merchant besides playing football.

Seeler was a gifted, powerful, and prolific striker who, among other things, was most of all renowned for his leadership, consistency, overhead kicks, and aerial ability. He scored 137 times in 239 Bundesliga games, 43 times in 72 international games for the German national team, and 21 times in 29 European club tournament games. He was captain of both his club team and the national team for many years. He and his club won the German championship in 1960 and the DFB-Pokal in 1963. He was top scorer of the first Bundesliga season in 1963–64 and German Footballer of the Year in 1960, 1964, and 1970. During the 1960–61 season, Seeler, alongside his brother Dieter, helped to lead Hamburger SV to the semi-finals of the European Cup, where they narrowly missed out on the final against Benfica, losing out to Barcelona in a play-off match. During the 1967–68 season, Seeler also helped Hamburg to reach the final of the European Cup Winners' Cup, finishing the competition as top scorer, only to lose out to AC Milan. In 1978, he and his former teammate Franz-Josef Hönig played for Cork Celtic in a one-off…

He had a two-and-a-half-year tenure as president of Hamburger SV, which began in 1995, and ended in resignation in 1998 due to a financial scandal, for which he took responsibility. Seeler, however, was not himself implicated in the irregularities.

Club

International

Scores and results list West Germany's goal tally first, score column indicates score after each Seeler goal.

From 1959 until his death, Seeler lived with his wife in Harksheide, today a district of Norderstedt in the Hamburg Metropolitan Region. He was Protestant. Seeler's grandson, Levin Öztunalı, is also a professional footballer.