BERLIN: Dettmar Cramer, the former coach of Bayern Munich who led them to two consecutive European Cups in the 1970s, one Intercontinental Cup and is credited with helping develop football in Japan, has died at the age of 90.

The diminutive Cramer, with his trademark bushy sideburns, was also a former United States national team coach while also working as a coach or coaching instructor in dozens of countries around the world in a career that spanned more than half a century.

"For many he was more than just a sporting person," Bayern CEO Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, who was part of Cramer's winning Bayern team, said in a statement.

"For me he was a fatherly friend, he was the biggest promoter of my early sporting career. The fact that I played such successful football was thanks in large part to him," said the former Germany striker.

Cramer's biggest achievement remains the two straight European Cups with Bayern during the club's golden era where they won three in a row.

He had joined the Bavarians in 1975 in a team brimming with stars, including Gerd Mueller, Franz Beckenbauer and Uli Hoeness, straight after they won their maiden continental title a year earlier under his predecessor Udo Lattek.

"Dettmar Cramer was a globally highly recognised ambassador of German football," German football association (DFB) president Wolfgang Niersbach said in a statement. "He was respected everywhere for his competence but he was also a man who loved life, a lovely and caring individual."

Cramer, who was also an assistant to then Germany coach Helmut Schoen at the 1966 World Cup in England and had spent more than two decades at the DFB, started his coaching career in Westphalia in 1948.

He also had coaching stints in Egypt, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Greece and Thailand among other and also worked for Bundesliga clubs Bayer Leverkusen, Eintracht Frankfurt and briefly Hertha Berlin.