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SPIEGEL Interview with Football Legend Oliver Kahn

'Goalkeepers Need an Element of Insanity'

Oliver Kahn will play his last match for Bayern Munich this Saturday ending a hugely successful 20-year soccer career. The legendary goalkeeper spoke to SPIEGEL about his occassional bouts of insanity, what he learned from being left on the bench during the 2006 World Cup and how his plans for retirement include searching for emptiness.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Kahn, the one word that most aptly describes your career is insanity. One of your most famous insane moments happened during a 1999 match against Borussia Dortmund, when you almost bit the other team's forward, Heiko Herrlich, in the neck and almost delivered a Kung Fu kick to his fellow player, Stéphane Chapuisat. What's your take on these incidents, now that you have the wisdom of age?

Oliver Kahn: I'm reminded of those scenes almost monthly on some TV program or another. It just happened to be a highly emotional match, in which I truly overstepped the mark. But it was in fact harmless, because nothing actually happened. I would certainly not have bitten Heiko Herrlich, and I was three meters away from Chapuisat.

SPIEGEL: But you lost control.

Kahn: It looked pretty wild, but I was actually in control of myself. I've never really injured anyone throughout my career. It's part of my game to occasionally send a message, one that may be unpopular to the outside world, but can be important for the team. I was extremely annoyed during that 1999 match in Dortmund. We had gone through a long series of matches without conceding any goals, and I had just returned from an international match and had a huge bruise on my left thigh. All of these things can make a player aggressive. We conceded a goal right away, and I thought to myself: That does it!

SPIEGEL: Everyone thought: now Kahn has really lost it.

Kahn: That really surprised me. I thought to myself: They don't know me, otherwise they would see things differently. I always know how far I can go before I get kicked off the field. It was obvious to me that I couldn't actually kick or bite the other players. All I could do was make it seem that way.

SPIEGEL: It was a tightrope walk. But in the 20 years of your career, weren't you really close to insanity at times?

Kahn: Goalkeepers need an element of insanity. Who else would stand there and allow people to shoot balls at his face or abdomen, and still think it's great? You throw yourself at the feet of the other team's strikers, you give it your all, and of course somewhere in your subconscious you know that there are healthier things to do.

SPIEGEL: During your time in Karlsruhe, you once said that your rival is your enemy. Isn't that also a little crazy?

Kahn: I grew up in an era when "Dallas" and "Dynasty" were on TV and movies like "Rambo," "Rocky" and "Wall Street" were playing in the cinemas. The message was clear: If you work hard you'll make something of yourself, and anyone who tries to stand in your way is your enemy. Those were my infantile attempts to motivate myself. I can only smile about it today. But I guess that was just the 80s.

SPIEGEL: But the 1980s were also the decade of hedonism. Did you miss out on that part?

Kahn: It took me a long time to realize that football isn't martyrdom, but a game that's enjoyable, and one in which getting better at it is supposed to be fun. Perhaps it would have been better if I had understood this as a young man. But that realization didn't happen until later in my career. Besides, I am firmly convinced that you shouldn't necessarily emphasize hedonism, especially at the beginning of a career, but should instead focus entirely on performance.

SPIEGEL: How does one get out of this martyrdom?

Kahn: By no longer being willing to be constantly exhausted and to live in a tunnel that consists of nothing but football. When you have a child, football becomes relative. When you get involved in the problems of young people using drugs, as I have, and you get to know their stories, football becomes relative. And when you begin to share the worries and problems of friends, football becomes relative. But when I was between 20 and 30, my life revolved almost entirely around my job.

SPIEGEL: And then the system fell apart?

Kahn: I dealt with football every day, and every day I practiced longer and harder than everyone else, used every opportunity to think about how I could improve. I was so obsessed with football that you could say I was taking the goal home with me at night. And then one day the system fell apart.

SPIEGEL: And that was when your partying phase began. You wore designer T-shirts and spent your nights hanging out at the P1, and your love life was all over the tabloids.

Kahn: Transitional phase. That's what I'd call it.

SPIEGEL: Okay, transitional phase.

Kahn: The system shifted from one extreme to another. You try to make things right, but instead of doing it slowly and cautiously you want everything to happen right away.

SPIEGEL: At least you could have tried to keep the tabloids out of your fast-paced life.

Kahn: That's easier said than done. I'm not the kind of person who seeks the tabloids' attention and deliberately lives his life in that context. Not in the least. At the time, I tried to change my life and break out of my routine. But that turned into something I didn't like at all. I have always seen myself as an athlete. Of course, I made the mistake of unintentionally opening the door to my private life by just a crack. I wouldn't do the same thing again. It has to be accepted that my private life is private, and if that isn't the case, I have to do something about it. At some point I found the right balance for myself. But it's hard work, and no one gives you a free ride.

SPIEGEL: Wasn't this transitional phase also a reaction to the final of the 2002 World Cup, when the ball slipped out of your hand and Ronaldo scored?

Kahn: Many people have said: You should be happy that you didn't win the World Cup that year.

SPIEGEL: Do you see it that way?

Kahn: Of course not. I would love to have won the World Cup. But there are people who say: You were in a sort of tunnel at the time. Who knows where it would have taken you, if it had ended up bringing you success. The problem with the system I was living in was that it was exhausting. Being the world champion would have meant that everything was the way it should have been. But it wasn't. The mistake during the final was meant to show me that something wasn't right about my path in life, that a few small things had to be changed. And when I made those changes after the transitional phase, things improved for me.

SPIEGEL: The general view is that Oliver Kahn was trying to make up for his mistake, at the 2006 World Cup in his own country, by winning the championship that year. But then Klinsmann spoiled it for him. The next disaster.

Kahn: I thought: Hey, this is it, you'll do it in 2006. But then along came that Klinsmann system, and people had other ideas. In retrospect, sitting on the bench during the World Cup was very important for my life, perhaps even more important than playing. As far as I was concerned, it would only have been worthwhile if we had in fact become the world champions. And I don't know whether we would have made it with me on the field.

SPIEGEL: But you do think it's possible?