Time & Perspective Quote by Franz Beckenbauer

Beckenbauer is doing what elite athletes learn early: keep the room calm while the grown-ups fight. On the surface, he’s comparing two architectural proposals, but the real performance is diplomatic. “Completely different” and “totally futuristic” are deliberately clean labels - descriptive enough to sound informed, vague enough to avoid taking a side. It’s the language of someone used to clubs, sponsors, federations, and fans all pulling in opposite directions, where certainty becomes a liability.

The quote’s pivot is that little burst of permission: “You can of course get very excited.” He acknowledges the seduction of novelty without endorsing it. By invoking “the Olympic stadium in its time,” he smuggles in historical precedent: today’s outrage or hype is just a phase; yesterday’s shock becomes tomorrow’s landmark. It’s a canny appeal to civic memory, framing controversy as a predictable cycle rather than a crisis.

Then comes the escape hatch: “But each to his or her own taste.” That’s not a shrug; it’s a strategy. Beckenbauer shifts the debate from politics and money into aesthetics and personal preference - a safer, softer register. The subtext is clear: stop treating this as a moral referendum. In a public project where architecture doubles as identity branding, he’s trying to lower the temperature, keep stakeholders from hardening into camps, and preserve his own credibility as a unifying figure rather than another partisan voice.