German news agency DPA said the family confirmed Beckenbauer’s death via statement.
“It is with deep sadness that we announce that my husband and our father, Franz Beckenbauer, passed away peacefully in his sleep yesterday, Sunday, surrounded by his family,” the family said.
He won the 1972 and 1976 Ballon d’Or awards and was named Germany’s Footballer of the Century in 2000. He received the FIFA Centennial Player and Football Personality Award in 2004.
Beckenbauer defined the role of the Libero, the free player behind the defensive lines who set the pace of the game.
Winning 103 caps for Germany between September 1965 and February 1977, he led Germany’s “golden generation” to the 1972 European Championship and triumphed on home soil at the 1974 World Cup.
Beckenbauer is one of three people to have won the World Cup as both a player and coach, alongside Mário Zagallo with Brazil and Didier Deschamps with France.
At club level in Germany, he won three European Cups, a European Cup Winners’ Cup, five Bundesliga titles and four German cups with Bayern Munich and Hamburg.