Kasey Keller's club still cherishing 1970s

In the 1960s, Borussia Moenchengladbach won promotion to the Bundesliga with a lineup of players averaging 21 years of age and then took the First Division by storm.

Rheinische Post reporter Wilhelm August Hurtmanns likened their impetuous, unbridled play to young horses and began calling them the Foals.

Under Coach Hennes Weisweiler, they attacked at all costs, and included the long-haired ''rebel'' Guenter Netzer, the brilliant playmaker who achieved pop-star status while Bayern Munich's Franz Beckenbauer settled with respect.

SELLING SPREE. The Foals won five Bundesliga titles in the 1970s, one more than Bayern did that decade, two UEFA Cups and one German Cup. But unlike the metropolitan Bayern, which became a rich club, Gladbach was a small-town Rhineland team that had to sell players to stay afloat.

Netzer moved to Real Madrid in 1973, but Borussia kept winning. Its stars included Rainer Bonhof, the youngest starter on Germany's 1974 World Cup-winning team; another World Cup winner, Berti Vogts; its great scorer, Jupp Heynckes; Uli Stielike, a World Cup runner-up; and 1977 European Player of the Year Allan Simonsen, the small Dane who became a favorite of ''Soccer Made in Germany'' viewers in the United States.

Bonhof, Stielike and Simonsen were all sold to Spanish clubs by 1979, when Gladbach won its last title, the UEFA Cup. By then, Weisweiler left to coach Barcelona, Cologne and the New York Cosmos, with whom he won the 1980 NASL title. The club's knack for uncovering inexpensive young talent waned.

The exceptional players Gladbach did discover didn't stay long. In 1984, Lothar Matthaeus left for Bayern at age 23 after the last season in which Borussia came close to a league title. Stefan Effenberg moved to Bayern in 1990 at age 21.
Gladbach even spent two seasons in the Second Division (1999-2000), and has been a mid-standings team since. Bayern, of course, continued to dominate German soccer.

WINTER REINFORCEMENTS. Going into the winter break, Gladbach sat in 15th place, three points above the relegation zone. But it was the most active Bundesliga team on the market during the break, and its reinforcements included American keeper Kasey Keller, who arrived on a free transfer from Tottenham Hotspur.

Keller, who has played in England (12 seasons) and Spain (two seasons) since 1992, drew immediate praise.

After his first training sessions, the Rheinische Post declared that he wasn't one of those ''crazy'' goalkeepers, but ''loose, friendly and candid — the typical American.''

Then came Keller's first game, a 1-0 win over Arminia Bielefeld. Die Welt wrote that he exuded confidence and leadership qualities — and then compared him to the good-humored Wolfgang Kleff, Gladbach's keeper during its glory days and a part of each of its eight titles in the 1970s.

After the game, Keller, Die Welt pointed out, jogged to stands behind the goal where the hard-core supporters cheer and made Kontakt zu den Fans, ''like Kleff used to do.'' Then Keller offered a drink from his water bottle to the team mascot, Juenter the Foal, creating a charming image caught by cameras for German newspapers.

In the wake of the victory, Coach Dick Advocaat signed a seventh newcomer, Brazilian striker Giovane Elber, providing another dose of optimism to Gladbach fans dreaming of the long awaited revival.