Hoeness on attack over Daum affair, raps Beckenbauer

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Football-Germany/ Hoeness also complained he had not received enough support in the affair from Franz Beckenbauer, the Bayern club president. "I would have liked to have received more support from Franz at the start of this, as I did from Karl-Heinz Rummenigge (Bayern vice- president) from the first second," Hoeness told the Munich-based Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Hoeness played a leading role in the events which led to Daum losing his appointment from next June as German national team coach. It was Hoeness who had called for the German Football Federation to reconsider Daum's appointment, indicating the then Leverkusen coach's private life made him an unsuitable choice.

In remarks to a Munich local newspaper at the beginning of October Hoeness used a term which suggested Daum was a cocaine user. In the row which broke out, Daum voluntary took a drugs test - submitting strands of his hair to a forensic laboratory for analysis - which turned out to be positive. Daum immediately parted company with Leverkusen and left for Florida where he is still believed to be living.

Hoeness said he had received murder and bomb threats as a result of the affair. "Some people intended to destroy me," he said. "Through the media machinery I have been defamed in a way in which no other innocent person has been defamed."

Hoeness said Beckenbauer had "poured more oil onto the fire" by his initial statements in the affair. "It would certainly be better if the president of a club was not also columnist of a newspaper," Hoeness added in reference to Beckenbauer's column in the mass circulation Bild newspaper.

Hoeness said he was breaking off contact with the Bayer Leverkusen general manager Reiner Calmund. "I am not using the name Calmund any more, he no longer exists for me," he said. "I will not exchange another word with him. His destructive will has surprised me."

Hoeness also criticised the former Werder Bremen general manager Willi Lemke, who is now senator for education in Bremen. "It is astonishing that a man with such a character can become minister of a federal state and is responsible for education," he said.

Hoeness went on in the interview to attack German Justice Minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin, who had strongly criticised Hoeness. Daeubler- Gmelin had "seen a wonderful opportunity to put herself forward at someone else's expense", he said. "Until now she has not had the courage to apologize although she must have seen that she was in the wrong."

The media and the "arbitrariness in journalism" also bore responsibility for the developments in the Daum affair, Hoeness said.

Journalists used to make phone calls and carry out research, he said. "Today any halfwit can claim something and doesn't even have to justify it," he added.

(dpa)