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City plan Trautmann tributes
Manchester City are planning several tributes to mark the life of former goalkeeper Bert Trautmann, who died last month aged 89, the Premier League club announced Friday.
Trautmann, an outstanding goalkeeper, is best remembered for playing on with a broken neck during City's 1956 FA Cup final win over Birmingham at Wembley.
His career was remarkable in several respects, with City's decision to sign Trautmann highly controversial as he'd arrived in England as a Second World War prisoner, having been captured serving as a German paratrooper in Normandy shortly after the D-Day landings in France.
But his 545 appearances for City between 1949 to 1964, which included him being voted English football's player of the year following his Wembley heroics, were widely seen as doing much to improve Anglo-German relations.
City have now said Monday's Premier League match against Newcastle at Eastlands will be dedicated to Trautmann with a wreath laid before kick-off while the team will warm-up in goalkeeping shirts with 'Trautmann 1' written on the back.
Players will also wear black armbands and fans are set to participate in a minute's applause.
Trautmann was ambivalent about his Cup final heroics, which helped him be voted English football's player of the year in 1956.
"I played over 500 league games for City but that moment is still the one people refer to so it can be a little frustrating at times because no matter how well I played during that time, people will still say 'ah, you're the fellow who broke his neck playing at Wembley'," Trautmann said in an interview published two years ago.
"I'll admit it's not something I particularly like but it's something I've had to live with."
Some City supporters have called for a statue of Trautmann to be erected outside Eastlands or for one of the ground's stands to be named after him.
"An announcement about a permanent memorial will be made in due course," said a City statement.
Source; Supersport.com
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