Best Bayern Munich Defenders of all time

To know about the 

best Bayern Munich defenders of all time

, we have to first know what this team has been through. They weren't one of the founding members of the league in the early 1960s, but

was one of Germany's biggest clubs well before then and they've only gone from strength to strength.

To get to this level of power, Bayern Munich has had some of the greatest players in the world on their roster throughout history, however, it's in the defense where some of their all-time greats have established themselves as the best. Here we’re trying to take a look at some of the 

all-time best defenders at Bayern Munich

.

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Best Bayern Munich Defenders of all time ranked from 1 to 10

Are you ready to know who the 

best Bayern Munich defenders of all time

 are?

Jupp Kapellmann

Hans-Josef "Jupp" Kapellmann, who’s among the best Bayern Munich defenders of all time, is a former West German football player. Playing for the

in a

for one season in 1969, midfielder Kapellmann moved to

a year later when Aachen got relegated from the Bundesliga.

Kapellmann regularly played for FC Koln until 1973, ending in the runner-up position in Bundesliga and the German Cup in 1973 with them. After his great performance with his team, he was immediately signed by FC Bayern Munich for which his new team paid FC Koln 802,000 Deutsche Mark to acquire Kapellmann. 

Later, Kapellmann was used as a defender and was part of the European Cup winning group in 1974, 1975, and also in 1976.

He further won the Bundesliga in 1974 and the Intercontinental Cup in 1976 with Bayern, where he got known as one of the 

best ever Bayern Munich defenders

, yet he played the final forty of his 338 Bundesliga games for the local rival TSV 1860 Munich.

Jupp Kapellmann appeared in five games for West Germany between 1973 and 1974, but did not become a permanent part of the roster. In 1974, he was part of the group in the FIFA World Cup, helping his team win the trophy even though he started on the substitution bench.

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Bixente Lizarazu

We cannot talk about the best Bayern Munich defenders of all time and not talk about Lizarazu. Bixente Jean-Michel Lizarazu is a former French pro football player who plays as a left-back and has played in

and Bayern Munich.

He is among the best ever Bayern Munich defenders. He also got 97 caps with the French national team. In a twelve-year worldwide career from 1992 to 2004, Lizarazu played in three European championships and two World Cups for France, winning the 1998 FIFA World Cup and UEFA Euro 2000.

Before even playing a Bundesliga match, Lizarazu won a championship with his new club, winning the preseason DFL-Ligapokal.

It was the start of a highly successful spell in Bavaria, despite the interruption of some serious injuries, as he went on to win six Bundesliga championships, becoming one of the all-time best defenders at Bayern Munich, as well as five DFB-Pokals, the Champions League in 2001 and the Intercontinental Cup.

By winning the Intercontinental championship in 2001, he became the first footballer to be a current European and World champion in both international and club level. Today he’s known as one of the 

best defenders in Bayern Munich history

.

Lizarazu announced that he would move from Bayern in the summer of 2004 and he ultimately moved to

. However, after only six months back in France, he returned to Bayern Munich in January 2005.

During his second term playing with Bayern, which ended in 2006 as he was replaced by Phillipp Lahm, Lizarazu wore number 69 on his jersey; and made it clear that it was not a vulgar reference. He said the reason behind it was that he was born in 1969, he is 1.69 meters tall and his weight was 69 kg.

He played 268 games in numerous competitions for Bayern between 1997 and 2006 and scored eight goals. 183 of these games were in the German top-flight where he joined the best Bayern Munich defenders of all time.

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David Alaba

We’re going to start off our list of 

best defenders in Bayern Munich history

 with

. David Olatukunbo Alaba is an Austrian pro football player who plays for Bayern Munich and he also features with the Austrian national team.

One of the best ever Bayern Munich defenders, Alaba has played in a multitude of roles, including central midfield, central defense, right, and left-wing, but primarily plays as a left-back.

Since 2010, Alaba has participated in 350 games with Bayern Munich, winning 20 titles which includes the

in 2013 and 2020 and 9 Bundesliga titles. He was selected the Austrian player of the Year six times in a row from 2011 to 2016 and was part of the UEFA Team of the Year 3 times.

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Jerome Boateng

is a football player from Germany who plays as the center-back for the German national team and Bundesliga club Bayern Munich. He is widely considered as one of the all-time best defenders at Bayern Munich. 

To begin his football career, Boateng joined Tennis Borussia Berlin in 1994, before joining

in 2002.  His next destination was Hamburger SV. There he got the chance to be known as he helped the team to reach two consecutive UEFA Europa League semi-finals.

In 2010, Boateng joined

, but after one season he left Premier League to join Bayern Munich, where he still kicks the ball.

So far he has won 8 Bundesliga title, 5 DFB-Pokals, the 2012 and 2020 DFL-Supercup, the 2012–13 and the 2019–20 UEFA Champions League, the 2013 and 2020 UEFA Super Cup and the 2013 FIFA Club World Cup. No wonder why he is considered as one of the bests. Don’t you agree?

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Philipp Lahm

We can’t leave Philipp Lahm out of the list of 

all-time best Bayern Munich defenders

. Philipp Lahm is a German former football player who played at the defensive midfielder or right-back position who spent most of his early career playing in the left-back position.

He became the Bayern Munich captain and led them to many achievements like the 2013 UEFA Champions League as part of the Treble. He is also the former captain of his national team, which he led to win the 2014 FIFA World Cup, before leaving football.

Lahm is considered by many to be one of the best Bayern Munich defenders of all time and was part of the World Cup team in 2006, 2010, and 2014. Lahm is right-footed; however, he can perform on both sides of the football field, because of his versatility and intelligence.

He usually went from the flank to the inside of the field to either shoot or pass. He is particularly known for his speed, technique, strength, and tackling, as well as his small size, because of which he was called the "

Magic Dwarf

."

Despite his size, his talent for understanding the game, his leadership capabilities, he is widely regarded as one of the best Bayern Munich defenders of all time, because of his positioning and tackling ability and his other skills.

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Klaus Augenthaler

Klaus "Auge" Augenthaler is a German ex-footballer and currently a manager. A defensive player, in his 15-year career with FC Bayern Munich he won the Bundesliga title seven times. That must be enough to put him among the best Bayern Munich defenders of all time.

He also represented the West German national team, and won the FIFA World Cup in 1990. In 2005, he was selected as a part of the greatest Bayern Munich XI in the team’s history. As we mentioned he’s also one of the all-time best Bayern Munich defenders.

Augenthaler played usually as a central defender, particularly in the later parts of his career. During his years with Bayern Munich, he won the Bundesliga champion seven times and the

three times.

In the 1982 European Cup, his team became runner-up, and again in 1987, although he missed the final game because of a suspension. From 1984 when his career began until the end of it as a footballer in 1991 Klaus Augenthaler was the captain of his club team.

He appeared in 404 Bundesliga games and played 89 games in European cup contests with Bayern. Between 1983 and 1990 he featured 27 times for West Germany, with which he won the 1990 World Cup in Italy in the final game versus Argentina.

He was a member of the group that got to the final of the 1986 World Cup, but he did not play in the final because he participated in two group matches.

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Hans-Georg Schwarzenbeck

Hans-Georg "Katsche" Schwarzenbeck is a former German footballer who played as a defender. As one of the 

best Bayern Munich defenders ever

, he played in the Bundesliga from 1966 to 1979, appearing in 416 matches as a defender for Bayern Munich.

He won German league championships six times, German Cups three times, the European Cup Winners' Cup once, and European Cups three times in a row.

In the 1974 finals, Schwarzenbeck netted the goal which equalized the result in the European Cup final game against

in the last moments of the extra time. Two days later, Bayern won the return game 4–0.

Schwarzenbeck played 44 times for Germany between 1971 and 1978. His biggest success was winning the 1974 World Cup, with West Germany winning against the Netherlands 2–1 in the final game.

He also led the national team to a win in the 1972 European Championship, by winning against the USSR in the final, and to the finals in the 1976 tournament, which they lost to Czechoslovakia during penalty kicks in the final.

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Paul Breitner

Paul Breitner is a retired German football player who played as a left-back and midfielder. Considered one of the best Bayern Munich defenders of all time, Breitner was part of the FIFA World Cup All-Time Team, and was selected by Pele as one of the best 125 best living football players at a FIFA Awards event in 2004. He was recognized for his partnerships with Franz Beckenbauer and Berti Vogts playing for the national team, while Karl-Heinz Rummenigge played midfield for Bayern Munich.

Breitner won 48 caps for West Germany and was an essential part of the roster that won the 1974 FIFA World Cup, who scored in the final.

He also scored in the final of the 1982 World Cup, making him one of only four players to have scored in two different World Cup final matches but despite his scoring, he is still best known as being one of the all-time best Bayern Munich defenders. The others were Zinedine Zidane, Pele, and Vava.

During his club career, Breitner won seven National Championships with Bayern Munich and

, the Champions' Cup as well as the German and Spanish cups. During his period at Bayern Munich, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge and him created a partnership that they were often called Breitnigge.

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Konrad Heidkamp

Konrad ‘Conny’ Heidkamp joined FC Bayern in 1928-29. Although a native of Dusseldorf, he lived and breathed the role of one of the best Bayern Munich defenders of all time and Bayern captain like few before or after him.

Particularly during the days of the Nazi regime, during the war, and in the post-war years, Germany made a lot of effort keeping the team and the whole organization together. The powerful citizen of Germany, also known as Grenadier because of his power in shooting, brought power to the tackle and passing at the left-back position.

The man who led the 1932 German victorious roster was a strong character and admired even outside of his team.

For instance, when many teams responded to Reichsmarschall Hermann Goring's request for “donations of used metal” in 1940 and gave away their trophies and medals to be melted down to make weapons, Bayern did not hand over their trophies and kept them at the team's offices in the center of Munich.

When the city began to be bombed in the summer of 1942, and the team’s valuable trophies were put in danger.

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Franz Beckenbauer

Here is where our list of best Bayern Munich defenders ever gets really interesting. Franz Beckenbauer is a former German professional manager and footballer. During his professional career, he was known as Der Kaiser ("The Emperor") due to his impressive style, dominance, and leadership on the pitch, and also because his name "Franz" is the same as the Austrian emperor.

He is widely regarded to be one of the best Bayern Munich defenders of all time. Beckenbauer, got known in the league as a central defender and started out as a midfielder. He is a highly versatile player. 

He got named European Footballer of the Year twice. Beckenbauer appeared 103 times for West Germany and played in three FIFA World Cups and two European Championships.

He is among the three players, along with Brazil's France's Didier Deschamps and Mário Zagallo to win the World Cup both as a player, and as a manager; he won the World Cup as captain in 1974 and did the same thing as a manager in 1990.

He was the first captain to both win the World Cup and European Championship at the international level and the European Cup at the club level. He was a member of the FIFA World Cup Dream Team in 2002, the World Team of the 20th Century in 1998, and in 2004 he was listed in the FIFA 100 of the world's best players alive.

At the club level, playing for Bayern Munich, Beckenbauer managed to win the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup in 1967 and the European Cups three times from 1974 to 1976. The latter achievement made him the first-ever player to win three European Cups as the captain of his team.

He became the team manager and later president of Bayern Munich. After spending two terms at the New York Cosmos, he entered the U.S. National Soccer Hall of Fame.

During Beckenbauer's time at Bayern Munich, the club won three league championships in a row from 1972 to 1974 and also a hat-trick of European Cup wins which earned the club the honor of keeping the trophy permanently and made him one of the best Bayern Munich defenders ever.

Did you enjoy our article of best the Bayern Munich defenders of all time? Who do you think has to be added to this list? Let us know in the comment section. 

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