Oliver Kahn

• 1. Introduction

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  Oliver Kahn won the Golden Ball at the 2002 FIFA World Cup, the award for the tournament's best individual performer, despite having fumbled a shot directly to Ronaldo's feet to concede Germany's first goal in the final. No goalkeeper in World Cup history had ever won that award before him. None has since. The questions that linger around that night in Yokohama go to the heart of what made Kahn a singular figure: how does a man who makes the decisive error in the biggest game of his life walk away with the prize? And what does that say about everything else he had done to get Germany there? The story begins not on a grand stage but at a modest club in his hometown of Karlsruhe, where a six-year-old first put on boots at the same club where his father had played a decade before.

• 2. The Karlsruhe Years

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  Kahn joined Karlsruher SC at the age of six in 1975, following his father Rolf, who had played for the same club from 1962 to 1965. He started his time there as a field player before moving into goal, and the junior system shaped him over twelve years before his professional debut in the 1987-88 Bundesliga season. His first league appearance, on the 27th of November 1987, was a 4-0 away defeat to 1. FC Koln, and he spent his earliest professional years as the reserve behind Alexander Famulla.

  Manager Winfried Schafer did not give Kahn the starting spot until 1990. From there, Kahn grew into a central figure for the club, and his reputation was built in part on a single extraordinary night in the 1993-94 UEFA Cup. Karlsruher SC had lost the opening leg of their round-of-sixteen tie 1-3 at Valencia's Mestalla Stadium. The return match at home produced a 7-0 rout of the same Valencia side, a result the German press dubbed the "Miracle at Wildparkstadion." The run ended in the semi-final against SV Austria Salzburg, but the performances had been noticed. Bayern Munich came calling.

• 3. Arriving at Bayern

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  Bayern Munich signed Kahn at the beginning of the 1994-95 season to replace Raimond Aumann, paying DM 4.6 million, a record fee for a goalkeeper at that time. His first season brought serious injury: a cruciate ligament rupture kept him off the field for almost six months. He returned and, two months later, made his debut for the Germany national team.

  The 1996 UEFA Cup Final brought Kahn's first major trophy in Munich. Bayern defeated Bordeaux 3-1. The following Bundesliga season delivered his first German championship, along with the German League Cup. He was also named German Goalkeeper of the Year for the second time, the first having come in 1994 during his final season at Karlsruhe.

  Then came the night that still defines how some supporters remember the late 1990s in Munich. In the 1999 Champions League Final at Camp Nou, Mario Basler scored for Bayern in the sixth minute. Bayern held the lead deep into stoppage time. Teddy Sheringham equalised, and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer scored the winner for Manchester United in injury time. The same year, the International Federation of Football History and Statistics named Kahn World Goalkeeper of the Year for the first time.

• 4. The Titan at His Peak

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  On the 3rd of March 2001, Kahn was sent off in a match against Hansa Rostock under circumstances that became a piece of football folklore. With Bayern losing 2-3 in the final minutes and a corner kick coming in, Kahn crept into the penalty area and punched the ball into the net. He received an immediate red card. Afterward, he joked that he had thought the goalkeeper was allowed to use his hands in the box.

  That same season delivered his defining club achievement. In the 2000-01 UEFA Champions League Final against Valencia, Kahn was named man of the match after saving three penalties in the shoot-out. He then walked across the pitch to find Santiago Canizares, the defeated Valencia goalkeeper, and attempted to comfort him. For that gesture, Kahn received the UEFA Fair Play Award. Bayern Munich also won the Intercontinental Cup that year at Tokyo's National Stadium, defeating Boca Juniors of Argentina.

  Between 1999 and 2002, Kahn received four consecutive UEFA Best European Goalkeeper awards. The IFFHS named him World's Best Goalkeeper three times, in 1999, 2001, and 2002. He won the German Footballer of the Year award in both 2000 and 2001. His Bayern Munich profile, during those years, listed his attributes simply as "impatient, disciplined, ambitious."

• 5. Germany and the 2002 World Cup

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  Kahn's path to the German captaincy was gradual. He had been called up as a third-choice keeper for the 1994 World Cup, behind Bodo Illgner and Andreas Kopke, and spent the 1996 European Championship as a reserve even as Germany lifted the trophy in England. He sat on the bench through the 1998 World Cup in France, only becoming the undisputed starter after Kopke retired at the end of that tournament.

  The 5-1 defeat to England in Munich in 2001 was one of the lowest points of his international career. Germany had beaten England 1-0 at Wembley the year before and were favoured again; instead, Michael Owen scored a hat-trick. Germany still qualified for the World Cup via a play-off against Ukraine, and Kahn retained the captaincy, which he had taken over from striker Oliver Bierhoff.

  At the 2002 World Cup, Germany were not regarded as favourites, yet Kahn conceded only three goals across the entire competition before the final, two of which came in that deciding match against Brazil. Playing with torn ligaments in his right ring finger, he fumbled a rebounded Rivaldo shot to Ronaldo in the 67th minute. Brazil added a second and won 2-0. Kahn stood alone in goal at the final whistle. He refused publicly to blame his injury for the mistake. The FIFA Technical Study Group gave him the Lev Yashin Award for best goalkeeper and, unprecedented for a goalkeeper, the Golden Ball for best player of the tournament. He had also become the first German goalkeeper to keep five clean sheets across a single World Cup.

• 6. The Lehmann Rivalry and Final Years

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  Germany's manager Jurgen Klinsmann, who had replaced Rudi Voller, used the period before the 2006 World Cup to rotate the starting position between Kahn and Jens Lehmann of Arsenal, treating the competition openly as a way to raise the performance of both keepers. On the 7th of April 2006, Klinsmann announced that Lehmann would be his first choice for the tournament.

  Kahn chose to stay as backup rather than withdraw. Before the quarter-final penalty shoot-out against Argentina, the two men embraced and shook hands, and Kahn offered Lehmann words of encouragement. In the post-match press conference, Kahn praised Lehmann publicly for his two decisive penalty saves. After Germany was eliminated by eventual champions Italy in the semi-finals, Kahn started the third-place play-off on the 8th of July 2006. Germany won 3-1 against Portugal. Kahn kept several important saves: he deflected a shot from Pauleta after the Portuguese forward had beaten the German defence, and later stopped a shot from Deco taken just inside the penalty area. It was his last appearance for Germany, his 86th cap, 49 of them as captain.

  At club level, his final Bundesliga match was a 4-1 victory against Hertha Berlin on the 17th of May 2008, his 557th appearance in German top-flight football. As of 2023, only Manuel Neuer has recorded more clean sheets in Bundesliga history than Kahn's total of 204. His farewell match was a testimonial against a Germany XI on the 2nd of September 2008, ending 1-1 after a 20-year professional career. His very last appearance in a Bayern shirt came not in Germany at all but at the Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata, in a friendly against Mohun Bagan during Bayern's 2008 Asian tour. Roughly 120,000 people attended.

• 7. Life Beyond the Pitch

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  Kahn was born in Karlsruhe, and his roots include Latvian heritage through his father's side: Rolf Kahn was born in Liepaja in 1943 to a Latvian mother, Erika Alksne, and a Baltic German father. Kahn's older brother Axel also played professionally for Karlsruher SC.

  In April 2011, a German court fined Kahn 125,000 euros, equivalent to roughly 182,223 US dollars at the time, for failing to declare more than 6,000 euros' worth of luxury clothing purchased during a trip to Dubai. He received his coaching licence in 2010 and completed a Master of Business Administration degree in 2012 at the Privatuniversitat Schloss Seeburg, with a thesis titled "Strategic management in Germany's professional football."

  On the 30th of August 2019, it was announced that Kahn would join the executive board of FC Bayern Munich from the 1st of January 2020. On the 1st of July 2021, he succeeded Karl-Heinz Rummenigge as CEO of the club. He was dismissed from that role on the 27th of May 2023. His wax figure was inaugurated in the Berlin branch of the Madame Tussaud museum in 2008, the same year Konami later added him to Pro Evolution Soccer 2016 as a myClub Legend. The German pop group Die Prinzen recorded a song named after him: Olli Kahn.