By then the crowd favourite had long been indispensable to Düsseldorf. But it was 20 August 1966 that turned the birthday boy into a legend. “We played in a sold-out Rote Erde in Dortmund,” Schult begins, now clearly reliving his favourite story. “That our first Bundesliga match happened to fall on my 27th birthday was the best gift I could have imagined.”