About Opentopia
Opentopia Directory Encyclopedia Tools

Oliver Kahn

Encyclopedia : O : OL : OLI : Oliver Kahn

Oliver Kahn (born 15 June, 1969) is a German football goalkeeper. He played for the German national team (from 1995 to 2006) and plays for Bayern München (since 1994). He is known as King Kahn or Kahn, the Titan for his prowess in the game; he is regarded by many to be one of the best goalkeepers in the world.

Contents

Career

Kahn was born in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg.

He began his football career in 1976 in his native town. A year later, he was playing for Karlsruher SC's youth team. He worked his way up through the youth teams but never quite made it into the international youth competition. He subsequently made his Bundesliga debut in the autumn of 1987 and left an indelible mark from the outset. It took him only a short time to establish himself as one of the best last lines of defence in the Bundesliga and his excellent displays were rewarded with a call-up to the national team in October 1993. He was drafted into the German squad at the 1994 FIFA World Cup as reserve keeper to Bodo Illgner, but never made the starting line-up.

He was signed by Bayern Munich at the beginning of the 1994/95 season, and has gone on to win many honors, both at the domestic and international levels. The 2.5 million euros paid by the Bavarian club was a record fee for a goalkeeper at the time, and from the very beginning Kahn was made Bayern's first-choice. Although suffering a rupture of his cruciate ligament in the next season, he developed into a formidable goalkeeper.

His international debut came in a match against Switzerland on June 23, 1995. But he had to pay his dues before becoming Germany's number one in goal. He made do with being the reserve keeper at Euro 96 in England. At the 1998 FIFA World Cup in France he had to play second fiddle for the third successive major international tournament. It was not until Andreas Köpke announced his retirement at the end of the tournament that Oliver Kahn was finally given his chance as Germany's undisputed number one.

In 2002, he won the adidas Golden Ball for best player and the Yashin Award for top goalkeeper of the 2002 FIFA World Cup, after allowing only two of the seven national sides to score against him: the Republic of Ireland and the eventual champions Brazil. Kahn also captained the German team for the entire tournament. Despite being beaten only three times overall, he was widely blamed for losing the final after giving up a goal to Brazilian striker Ronaldo off a rebound. He also starred for his country at Euro 2000 and Euro 2004.

Kahn has announced his intention to play two more seasons at Bayern Munich, calling it a career after the 2007/08 season. [link]. His next Bundesliga match will mark a significant milestone: his 500th appearance.

On July 8 2006, Oliver Kahn announced his retirement from the German national team, after backstopping them to third place in the 2006 FIFA World Cup on a match against Portugal (Kahn's only cap during the event) with a great performance.

Family

Kahn and his wife Simone—with whom he has two children—split in 2003 after he was romantically linked to former barmaid Verena Kerth. The affair with Kerth was widely publicised in German tabloids when Kahn decided to leave his wife for Kerth while Simone was in the eighth month of her second pregnancy with son David (born March 7, 2003 and after daughter Katharina-Maria) and was forced to hide from the press in a private hospital near Munich. Kahn and Kerth have been in a relationship since then.

Player profile

Kahn is a player obsessed by perfection, and is known to train fanatically. He is hyper-competitive and always demands 100% from himself and his teammates. On the pitch, he is a charismatic, dominant presence who leads his defense and intimidates the opposition. His reflexes are stellar, his control of the box is excellent, and he excels in one-on-one situations. Because of his seemingly overambitious attitude in the field he is made fun of sometimes in Germany by some comedians, portraying him as a maniac.

Due to his increasing age and personal problems, his game has gradually declined. He hit a nadir when he allowed a seemingly soft shot into the net against Real Madrid in the 2004 Champions League season, resulting in his team being eliminated from the competition. Since then, he has been unable to regain his former status as an undisputed world class keeper. He lost his status as the first choice goalie for the German national team (with team manager Jürgen Klinsmann rotating the number one spot between Kahn and his longtime arch rival Jens Lehmann of Arsenal F.C.). Kahn's hopes of playing the 2006 World Cup were crushed on April 7, 2006, when Klinsmann announced his decision to use Lehmann as Germany's goalkeeper in the tournament starting in June. Kahn decided to continue his national team career, despite being demoted to a backup position. Although unhappy about being the substitute, Kahn publicly praised Lehmann after the latter saved two penalty shots in the quarter-final shootout against Argentina.

After Germany was eliminated in the semi-finals by Italy, Kahn was given the start for the Third Place match. Kahn also captained the team in the absence of the injured Michael Ballack, and earned his last international appearance for Germany, defeating Portugal 3-1. After that he retired from national team, having earned 86 caps.

Honours

This does not cite its .
You can Wikipedia by introducing appropriate citations.
Club Titles

National Team

Personal Honours

|- style="text-align: center;"

Ridicule

In 1996, popular German comedian Harald Schmidt lip-synched Kahn, when he angrily shouted at colleague Andreas Herzog, by using ape noises and calling him gorilla. This achieved cult fame, and from that moment on, fans of the opposing team would taunt him by making ape noises and throwing bananas at him. But since his stellar performance at the 2002 FIFA World Cup, this has mostly ceased. After the championships, German band "Die Prinzen" sang a song about him "Olli Kahn".

Recently, Kahn capitalized on his "mad maniac" image in commercials in which he terrified opposing penalty kickers, bested a stadium lusting for his blood and let out loud animal roars. After Kahn lost the No. 1 goalkeeper spot in the German national team to Jens Lehmann, he even sent himself up in ads. In a [commercial] for the Paulaner brewery, he sits on a bench with a beer and sighs "on the bench, life is best", and in [ads] for Burger King, he sits on a bench with the caption Olli Kahn proves his size (in German, "size" also means "composure"), a reference to a new, bigger burger.

Trivia

Kahn maintains strict control over his image, therefore, he does not allow his name to be used in some football simulation games such as Football Manager, where he instead appears as Jens Mustermann (Mustermann being the fictitious name used in sample IDs and passports, Jens as provocation, because it is the first name of his biggest rival, Jens Lehmann).

He is also an avid golfer, taking part in golf tournaments during his spare time.

Prior to a 2006 match against Arminia Bielefeld in Munich, fellow Bayern Munich goalkeeper Michael Rensing peppered Kahn with practice shots. One shot hit Kahn squarely in the eye, causing enough swelling and discoloration to force him from taking the field. Television coverage of the match showed Kahn watching from the stands and laughing, apparently at the unlikely misfortune. With Rensing in goal, Bayern Munich won the match 2-0.

During a bad spell for Bayern Munich, Kahn was asked what the team lacked during a press conference; his reply, translated literally from the German was: "Eggs! Eggs! We need eggs, if you know what I mean." Eier (eggs) is a common German euphemism for testicles.

External links

Bayern München - Current Squad
1 Kahn | 2 Sagnol | 3 Lúcio | 5 Van Buyten | 6 Demichelis | 7 Scholl | 8 Karimi | 10 Makaay | 11 Podolski | 14 Pizarro | 18 Görlitz | 19 Dos Santos | 20 Salihamidžić | 21 Lahm | 22 Rensing | 23 Hargreaves | 24 Santa Cruz | 25 Ismaël | 26 Deisler | 29 Dreher  | 30 Lell | 31 Schweinsteiger | 36 Fürstner | 39 Ottl

 

From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.

Search Titles
0123456789
ABCDEFGHIJ
KLMNOPQRST
UVWXYZ?

E-mail this article to:

Personal Message: