On the day of the 54th anniversary of the German goalkeeper Oliver Kahn, we recall the brightest match in the career of an eminent football player.
A stranger among friends
A sad and ugly story from the Bundesliga, or rather, from the main club in Germany. Former Bayern captain turned Munich CEO Oliver Kahn and sporting director Hasan Salihamidzic have been kicked out of the club after a disastrous third season in a row in the Champions League, internal squabbles and a controversial transfer policy… «Kicked out» is more than the right word to describe the management's decision, after all, there was a resignation on May 27. On the day when the players took over Cologne and, thanks to the mediocre game of Borussia Dortmund, won the 11th league title in a row in a parallel meeting.
![]( /wp-content/uploads/2023/06/cc85a64a721c173c5fe83a4f1414600a.pngAs Kahn himself later admitted, he was not even allowed to celebrate the triumph with the players. The shock was not only among the fans, but also among the leaders of Bayern: this is how Josua Kimmich compared what happened to an “emotional rollercoaster”. Yes, Bayern president Herbert Hainer has expressed confidence that things will get better and Kahn will return to the Munich family, but the unpleasant aftertaste from the turbulence at the top of Hollywood FC will remain for a long time.
<br />So parting with the legends is not to face.</p>
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<p>"We'll sit down when everything settles down and talk about everything in the world. Everyone understands that I am disappointed that I was not with the team. I took responsibility because I wanted to give something back to the club. After a successful time with Uli Hoeness and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, it was not easy. Now the club is in a transitional phase, it is always difficult. Sometimes there are mistakes… The current situation is not easy, but for me the good things are happening with Bayern. far outweighs the negative ones. The annoyance of the last days will not change that,” Kahn was quoted by Bayern & Germany.</p>
<p>Terror on the field<br />What did fans around the world love about Kahn? With his madness, his boundless desire to win. The media compared Oliver to «the man with a thousand arms» and «a goalie version of Mike Tyson at his finest». Like the great boxer, the goalkeeper of Bayern and the German national team was ready to tear the opponent apart. One of Oliver's fellow goalkeepers refused to share a room with him, fearing that Kahn would suffocate him with a pillow during his sleep. Another stated that the enemy of the German is everyone who wears goalkeeper gloves.However, let's look at the highlights and see that Kahn's enemies are everywhere (they are even in the form of Bayern). YouTube will give us dozens of videos with «arrivals» of a rude keeper. And then we read the biography of a native of Karlsruhe and find out that aggression was inherent in Kahn since childhood … After all, from a very young age, the athlete had to defend himself from the attacks of his peers. All because of the protruding lower jaw, for which Kahn was nicknamed «Gorilla».</p>
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The obsession with the result and the obsessive desire to turn the football field into a battlefield made the charismatic blond in a cap one of the best goalkeepers in the world at the turn of the century. Numerous team achievements speak for themselves:
- Eight-time German champion;
- Champions League Winner (2001);
- UEFA Cup Winner (1996);
- European Champion 1996;
- World Championship finalist 2002.
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Multiple German and German League Cup winners;
…and personal:
- Won the best goalkeeper in the Bundesliga seven times;
- European UEFA Best Goalkeeper in 2000, 2001 and 2002;
- Twice German Footballer of the Year;
- The best player in the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea;
- In 2002 he became the second player in the world according to FIFA. The best is Brazilian Ronaldo, who beat Caen twice in the World Cup final.
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"The line between becoming a hero and being a loser is nowhere so small as in goalkeepers".
Oliver Kahn
Former FC Bayern and Germany player
Bulletproof wall on the San Siro
The Champions League final of the 2000/01 season was perhaps the best on Oliver's sporting path. Then Bayern and Valencia met in Milan. The Germans reached the decisive stage of the tournament for the second time in three years and were eager to redeem themselves for a nightmare in the 1999 final against Manchester United. The captain helped them in this. Kahn stopped the «bats» and inflicted the second defeat of the Spaniards in the Champions League final in a row. Although the nominal guests were very good, it came to a penalty shoot-out (1:1 after 120 minutes, both goals were scored from 11 meters), in which the German hit the Valencians three times.
First, Kan was pulled out from his right corner;
Then the goalkeeper moved the ball into the crossbar, after which the «round» bounced into the field and deserved a kiss from the German;
The «golden» rescue turned out exactly like the first one: the hero of the final again rushed to the right, rebounded and ran to celebrate the fourth «big-eared» trophy in the history of Bayern.
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The most touching moment of that meeting at the San Siro happened after the penalty shoot-out. Kahn was again in the spotlight of photojournalists: while the Munich team were going crazy from the long-awaited triumph, the captain went to comfort Santiago Cañizares, the guardian of the gates of Valencia, weeping from disappointment. For a long time, the press circulated an image with the caption «Kahn reassures the goalkeeper of Valencia, whose mother died,» but this is not true. Cañizares's mother was alive and well, and Oliver only expressed respect to the opponent for a tough confrontation.
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«I remember how Canizares lay down on the goal line and started crying. I sympathized with him: I myself experienced something similar in 1999 … The feelings that you experience when winning the title, and the feelings after missed or saved penalties will remain in your memory forever. The celebration itself is also nice. True, this is not something that will stay with you for the rest of your life. «
We note that for that beautiful deed the Milan final player received the UEFA Fair Play Award. Bravo Oliver Kahn!