As the 2007/08 Bundesliga season comes into the finishing straight, I will be publishing new editions of my popular Behind The Wall articles each month. In the meantime, here’s the inaugural Behind The Wall published by Goal.com in October 2004…
Brian O’Driscoll in Berlin hails the return of Kung-Fu Kahn in Bremen on Saturday, in his new weekly Bundesliga editorial.
He’s back! As famous for his physical assaults on Bundesliga strikers as he is for letting in howlers, Oliver Kahn, Bayern’s legendary Kong-like goalkeeper, decided it was time to reprise a role that he has become much-loved for, no, not visiting nightclubs at 6 in the morning, but that of intimidating onrushing forwards with all the subtlety of a gorilla in the mist, red mist. Welcome back, Kung-Fu Kahn!
Kahn is the greatest goalkeeper of his generation. For all of that, he has, in many ways, become a figure of fun in recent times, largely due to his own excesses. Having made the greatest impact a goalkeeper has ever made on a World Cup, his final performance summed up the tragi-comic essence of net-minding. Ronaldo, the greatest striker of his generation, was having no luck against the German captain, even with the odds firmly stacked in the Brazilian’s favour. Kahn either psyched out the “phenomenon,” or made saves based on sheer memory and instinct as if in a trance. Then the spell suddenly broke, and the rest is history. Sympathy poured in from his countrymen and from amateur custodians around the world. It was as if the Bayern man had proven the iron law that if a striker converts one chance in ten he’s a hero, but if a goalkeeper makes one mistake, he’s a zero, no matter what went before. How we all loved him for it. The fallibilty of unquestioned greatness makes us all feel better. A man may become a god, but the gods will always strike him down again.
It was all downhill for Kahn after that, both personally and publicly. From being the hero of a nation, Kahn was soon reduced to one of those “nasty love-rats” beloved of the tabloids for conducting an affair while his wife was pregnant. His marriage ended, and subsequent relationships have foundered in the public gaze too, with Oliver memorably found in a nightclub at 5 in the morning on the day of a match that he had apprarently missed due to injury.
Following on from this troubled time, Kahn developed a rather peculiar persona as the quiet man, all deep and sombre, a thinker of serious thoughts, a man of unmined depth. After all, why else would the normally impervious Kahn allow a trundling Roberto Carlos miss-hit slip under his frame if it wasn’t for some profound intellectualising on the existentialism of goalkeeping? Olli was lost in thought, and Bayern simply, well, lost.
So, given the unsuitablity of sensitivity to the goalkeeper’s world, it is with great relief that I can happily confirm the re-emergence of Kung-Fu Kahn, all high-kicking and screaming at the Weserstadion on Saturday. With Bayern leading 2-0, Kahn came to collect a high, lobbing ball only to find national team striker Miroslav Klose attacking the same sphere. Kahn beat the Bremen man to the ball, caught it, and immediately raced back to Klose before sticking a gloved finger right up the striker’s nose – well, as much of it that would fit, anyway. Klose was stunned. The crowd was speechless. Kung-Fu Kahn, the gorilla-like madman of yore, the boorish yob that had bitten Heiko Herrlich of Borussia Dortmund, and clattered Leverkusen’s Thomas Brdaric around the head like an overly-aggressive schoolgirl, was back. Klose, shocked that his former national-team skipper would think the worst of him, remonstrated his innocence. Kahn was having none of it and insisted the striker had malevolently attempted to catch him with a leading knee. Referee Herbert Fandel watched in silence as the Weserstadion shook its head. With the ball in his hands a full twelve seconds, Kahn finally returned it to play with absolutely no sanction from the official. And all this after Kahn’s successor as national team captain, Michael Ballack, accidentally broke the nose of another Germany team-mate, Frank Fahrenhorst. So much for team-spirit.
Of course, Bayern went on to win in Bremen, and Kahn was all forgiveness afterwards, happy to smile with the beaten Klose who was still in a palpable state of complete bewilderment. The moral of the story? A gorilla that swings out of trees gets the banana, while one who reads books doesn’t. Or something like that. Kung-Fu Kahn is back. Noses everywhere will twitch nervously.
Brian A. O’Driscoll, Berlin
*Behind The Wall Returns on October 19 after the international break.
Originally posted at Goal. com: 05/10/2004 12:52
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