🐍🤯 Say what?! Former German pro sneaks cobra onto plane | OneFootball

Franz Gerber might only be a familiar name to football nerds or older football fans nowadays. The 71-year-old was active as a professional footballer in the 70s and 80s, playing for teams such as 1860, Bayern, Wuppertal, Hannover, and St. Pauli in the Bundesliga. In 1972, Gerber was crowned German Champion with FC Bayern as a young talent, but a major career eluded him.

However, Gerber still made a name for himself that the Bundesliga remembers to this day. During his time at FC St. Pauli, Franz Gerber became known as "Schlangenfranz" (Snake Franz). The striker had a fondness for snakes and once smuggled a cobra home from a team trip to Thailand. Excuse me, what?!

Gerber discovered his love for snakes early on; he received his first snake as a gift at the age of five. A grass snake, as Gerber recalls in an interview with '11Freunde'. But the grass snake was just the beginning of a veritable snake collection.

During the aforementioned team trip with FC St. Pauli in Thailand, Schlangenfranz couldn't stay in the team quarters any longer. For the reptile enthusiast, Thailand was akin to paradise, teeming with snakes.

So Gerber secretly set off and had himself dropped off with a translator and a hunter in the Thai jungle. "I absolutely wanted to take a snake home," he said years later to 11Freunde. And Gerber was to fulfill his dream. Together with the hunter, he caught a one-and-a-half-meter-long cobra. But how was he going to get it back to Hamburg?

Airport controls in the 70s were probably not as strict. So Gerber carefully placed the dangerous cobra in his bag and then placed the bag safely in a box. This all became Gerber's hand luggage, allowing him to bring the cobra safely back home. And all without the coach, staff, or teammates noticing.

But that wasn't all. Keeping a venomous cobra at home is literally playing with life and death. And Gerber had to experience this firsthand. In April 1974, a cobra bit him on the left index finger. Gerber was in life-threatening danger and could have died if he hadn't quickly sought help. "Fortunately, there is a tropical institute in Hamburg where they injected me with an antidote."

Schlangenfranz's life was thus saved, but he was out of action for eight weeks following the poisoning. And this was right in the middle of the fight for promotion to the second Bundesliga with FC St. Pauli. But even here, there was a happy ending for Gerber, as the Kiezkicker were promoted despite the absence of their top striker.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇩🇪 here.

📸 Martin Rose - Bongarts