[ad_1]
Andreas “Andi” Brehme was not supposed to be the hero of the 1990 World Cup final.
Striker Rudi Voller was on the ground to take the penalties, but when the time came he did not want to do so because he had been the man knocked down in the area; At least in the eyes of referee Edgardo Codesal. German football superstition said that the player who committed the foul should never take the resulting penalty. The second in line, Lothar Matthaus, also refused. The team captain had changed his boots at half-time and was not feeling comfortable.
Thus, it was the turn of the Inter Milan winger, Brehme, 29, to show his face, in the 85th minute of a goalless match, against the Argentine goalkeeper Sergio Goycochea at the Olympic Stadium in Rome. “If you score, we will be world champions,” Voller told his teammate, while angry protests from Diego Maradona’s men delayed the execution of the penalty for seven minutes. So there is no pressure.
Brehme, however, had something more important to reflect on. Which foot should he use? The Hamburg-born defender was the most ambidextrous player of his generation and he was equally willing to kick the ball with both feet. Four years earlier, on the way to Germany’s defeat in the 1986 World Cup final against the same rival, Brehme had converted a penalty with his left foot in the quarterfinal shootout against host Mexico.
That night, in Rome, he walked with the other foot. Goycochea had saved four penalties in the previous two games (against Yugoslavia and Italy), but this time he had no chance. The ball went low and true towards the corner. Shortly after, Germany won its third World Cup, but its first as a reunified nation.
“My left is harder and my right is more precise,” Brehme later told the German news magazine Der Spiegel. In training at Inter, he regularly challenged Italian international goalkeeper Walter Zenga to a penalty shoot-out, taking five shots with each foot.
Brehme had also scored in the quarter-final against the Netherlands and in the semi-final against England, when Peter Shilton could not prevent his left-footed free kick from going maliciously wide.
At the age of five he was juggling balls at half-time during games for HSV Barmbek-Uhlenhorst, his father Bernd’s amateur team based in Hamburg. After finishing his professional training as a machinist, Brehme signed for second division side Saarbrucken, but only played there for one season before being signed by then-powerful top-flight side Kaiserslautern in 1981.
Five years later, Bayern Munich bought him for 2 million German marks (1 million euros), the second highest transfer fee paid in the Bundesliga up to that time. He was a cultured player who combined great work ethic, defensive seriousness and intelligent running with a knack for scoring important goals. Brehme won the championship with Bayern in 1987 and then followed the call of Serie A, like so many great German and international players of the time.
At Inter he joined his former Bayern teammate Matthaus. National team forward Jürgen Klinsmann completed the trinity of tedesci (Germans) a year later.
Signing the trio was Inter’s attempt to emulate the success that city rivals AC Milan had achieved with three Dutchmen: Marco van Basten, Frank Rijkaard and Ruud Gullit. And it worked. The incredibly versatile Brehme won the Scudetto in 1989 (when he was voted Italy’s Footballer of the Year ahead of Maradona) and the UEFA Cup in 1991 under coach Giovanni Trapattoni.
He rejoined Kaiserslautern in 1993 and was relegated with them three years later. After the final whistle of the final day’s 1-1 draw against Bayer Leverkusen that plunged Kaiserslautern into the second division, Brehme sobbed uncontrollably in the arms of Voller (then Leverkusen striker) live in a television studio.
It’s a touching moment that went down in German football history and cemented Brehme’s popularity as a player who truly cared.
He decided to postpone his retirement to help them return next season. Brehme’s active career ends in a fairy tale: Kaiserslautern became the first team in Bundesliga history to win the league as a promoted team in 1998.
Subsequent periods as coach at Kaiserslautern and Trapattoni’s assistant at Stuttgart were less successful. Still, as the third man to score a goal in Germany’s World Cup victory and one of Inter’s most influential players, Brehme’s football legacy was beyond doubt.
Former teammates were deeply saddened by the 63-year-old’s untimely passing due to cardiac arrest on Monday night. “I can’t speak, I’m in shock,” Guido Buchwald, also a world champion in 1990, told the SID news agency. “Andi was always positive, he radiated life. He was a great human being, a great friend.”
Inter, who will wear black armbands in their Champions League home game against Atlético Madrid on Tuesday night, posted: “Ciao, Andy. A legend forever.”
Germany shares the sentiment.
(Top photo: staff/AFP via Getty Images)