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Interview with Jens Lehmann

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INTERVIEW WITH JENS LEHMANN in DRESDEN
EDITED TRANSCRIPT – September 12, 2012
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Question
Can you say what were your best memories of playing for Germany?
Jens Lehmann
My best memory of my German games were connected to the 2006 World Cup, when we played Argentina and later on we had to go to a penalty shoot-out and fortunately we won.
As a German, you are used to winning at penalty shoot-outs and so we have done quite well.  It was an amazing atmosphere. I regret a little bit that I did not stay on the pitch longer because
I immediately went in, and my whole team went on celebrating, when I was in the dressing room already.  But, unfortunately, a couple of days later, there came this knock-out against the Italians, in the last minute of extra time, which was a shock, because everybody was thinking, well, we’re going to have penalty shoot-outs again, but unfortunately the Italians scored just at the last minute of the game.
Question
Can you tell us about the note you had in your sock against Argentina?
Jens Lehmann
I always knew who were the possible penalty takers and where they were likely to shoot, and probably it came at my age that my memory was not that good any more, so I took the note, where I put the penalty takers on, into my sock and when it came to the penalties I took it out and tried to read which penalty taker came up to take the penalty, and it helped at the end, we won it. The note, after this game, became quite famous, and I remember that I wanted to throw it into the bin and then I pulled it out of the bin and said to myself ‘OK, I can use it for the kids, I can show them.’ And a day later, all of a sudden, this note was quite big in Germany, and it was at a charity event when a company donated one million euros for it, which was outstanding.  And now it is in some museum in Germany as a memory of the 2006 World Cup.
Question
What are you views of the German team of today?
Jens Lehmann
The German team right now is actually playing fantastic football, at times, and they can really attract people by watching them. Unfortunately for a couple of years, we can’t win any more.
We used to have this real mentality that we knew we can play badly, but at the end we were still able to win. This has been lost somewhere. And we don’t know how to get it back. But we’ve got a good coach in Joachim Löw and I think he will have his last attempt in 2014 to win it [the World Cup]. If not, probably there will be some changes, I don’t know, but I cross my fingers that they are going to win it, but it is going to be hard.
Right now the Spanish team is fantastic.  Without the Spanish team, we probably would have won the European Championships or the World Cup probably, but if there’s another team which is slightly better you have to work really, really hard at every detail, has to come into place to let it work, to let the team win something.
I think that the German football is a little bit lacking of technical awareness. We are, as you are aware, a nation of 80 million people and with a lot of good footballers, like Brazil.  So we did not really need to care about tactics.  But now, for example, the Italians, they are quite intelligent, they probably do not have that many good players as we have currently, but they are very well
educated in terms of tactics, so they are ahead of us, and that was why they went to the [Euro 2012] final and not us.
Question
You believe Germany are lagging behind other countries in tactics and preparation?
Jens Lehmann
In tactical respects they are. If you see the amount of coaches who are coaching big clubs abroad, there’s nobody [from Germany] and [they are] from all the other countries, like Dutch, like Spanish, like French, I don’t know, Portuguese now, they are all coaching some big clubs abroad. But the Germans, they are always staying in the Bundesliga and I think we need to improve on that side.
Question
Who would be your goalkeeper for the 2014 World Cup?
Jens Lehmann
Well the same guy who is there, Manuel Neuer. I think he’s got the greatest potential and he’s growing in maturity and experience.  There’s another guy who is coming again, who has been number one before, Rene Adler, who is playing for Hamburg now. He had a promising start at Hamburg because he came out of injury.  And so I think there will be a competition between those two again.
Question
Germany began with a 2-1 World Cup qualifier win against Austria. Was that a good start?
Jens Lehmann
So winning is everything, and sometimes we have to respect that the home side just play equally as well as you do, but unfortunately we know that the Austrians, most of the time do not win against us.
Question
What are your views on the club scene in Germany at the moment?
Jens Lehmann
In Germany we have two great teams right now with Borussia Dortmund and Bayern Munich, who are competing for winning the trophy at the end of the year.  Schalke 04 can come in, everybody hopes so, because we do not want to have it just a competition between two teams.  Bayern Munich is, on an international level, much more mature and better educated, more
experienced, and so they are always contenders for winning the Champions League.
Borussia Dortmund so far has not made it on an international level so that will be the challenge for them to do that this year.  So actually, it plays into Borussia Dortmund’s cart, when they get knocked out early in the Champions League, because then they can focus on the Bundesliga, as they have done in the previous two years.
Bayern is so much ahead of all the other teams, financially, that they most likely can buy success.  They cannot buy to win it at the end, but they can buy the Champions League appearances.
Question
You played 147 games for Arsenal. What are your best memories?
Jens Lehmann
When I played for Arsenal my biggest moments probably were the season when we had not lost a game [season 2003/04] when we won the Championship.  At the time we did not realise how big it was and how good we were and unfortunately we should have won more trophies, because we were the best team by far. 
That is sometimes the downside in England, because all of a sudden you get in some games, consecutive games, which is what happened to us at the time, it was six very hard games into ten days.  And at the end we were tired.  And I think it’s the reason as well for the English national team not doing well, because they do not have a winter break and the demands are so high in England that at the end of the year it is very hard for English club teams, or for the English national team to perform, to go for the Champions League trophy or to go to win the World Cup.  But coming back to the greatest moments, of course I can say that having won the trophy without losing a game was the biggest thing one I’ve ever achieved.
Question
Can you highlight something significant you did in that season to keep that record?
Jens Lehmann
I made some saves of course, but you never know if it was crucial to win a game.  Early in the season we played Manchester United, and in the last minute they had a penalty, and Van Nistelrooy missed, he only hit the crossbar, and that was probably the defining moment when we knew we could go quite far, it was luck was on our side as well.  If he had scored, we would not have won it without a defeat.
Question
Who were the world-class players in that side?
Jens Lehmann
Of course there was Thierry Henry, when he was peaking, not only this year, but even the year after.  There were some other great guys, Bergkamp, Vieira, Campbell, Cole. I could name all the team, because everybody played his role within this team and everybody respected each other, so we had a fantastic team spirit.  We once played Inter Milan and nearly got knocked out
of the Champions League, and we knew we had to get a result, and all of a sudden this team really stood up and we beat them at Milan 5-1, and so it showed us at the time how great we were as a team. The team spirit was vital to achieve such things.
And there were other fantastic matches. Against Villareal it was the semi-finals of the Champions League and we needed a draw, or to win, and I was lucky to save Riquelme’s penalty in the last minute which actually guaranteed us the draw, and so we went to the final.  Unfortunately the final did not go that well for me.  And even more unfortunate was that I was too old to make it good again.
I always question myself if I could have done better in the game against Barcelona when I touched Samuel Eto’o and got sent off after this foul.  And I should have made a decision to stay in my box, but for some reason I went out.  This was probably my biggest disappointment in football as I was too old to get it right again.
Question
What are your views on Arsene Wenger?
Jens Lehmann
Arsene Wenger is a coach who does not only inspire you on the pitch but as well off the pitch, because when you talk to him you are always finding it very exciting and you are always getting some great information about some other things in life.  I think that makes a great coach as well.  And he made Arsenal, he bought and sold so many players with a fantastic financial track record,
that actually the new stadium and everything he has built comes down to him and to his performance. 
So I quite enjoyed working for him, whereas at times it was psychologically very, very demanding, and I still had to recover from that even years after.
Well he just took me out after my second defeat on English soil, and that, for a guy who came there with his family and brought his whole life over to England, and being faced with the possibility to move somewhere again with the children, it was quite challenging.  And so I needed to reset my mind and find a different approach to get back in the team which is what I did. And I
came back much stronger.  But it took a lot of energy out of me.
I was arguing with him quite often, particularly when he took me out of goal, but then after 20 minutes of arguments we would talk for another half an hour on private things, very smooth and relaxed, so there was always a professional relationship and a private one, and the private one is still very good right now, and quite fortunately because I’m doing my coaching licence at Arsenal, and so I’m looking over his shoulder and they let me train the reserves sometimes and the Under 18s, which is a big gesture, and I really appreciate that.
I would like to probably become a manager after this year dependent on my progress in my pro-licence, which I am doing right now and so I am happy to learn a lot from Arsene and his coaching team, and from coaching myself.  It’s a good experience.
Question
What do you think of the Arsenal of today?
Jens Lehmann
At the moment they are making responsible decisions.  When you see Robin Van Persie, when you see that a player wants to leave for money reasons and probably because he thinks that somewhere else it is easier to win, you have to let him go, particularly when he has only one year on his contract, and when he played the first season without an injury in eight or nine years, so that was an extraordinary season for Robin. And then to make a decision: do we keep him or do we let him go?
So the future will tell us, and what will come into place next year with the financial fair play rule.  So then we will see how these rules actually come into place for clubs like Chelsea, Man City, who are spending beyond the budget and then it could turn out that clubs like Arsenal all of a sudden are far ahead of those clubs.
Question
People are saying Arsenal have a more sound defence this year?
Jens Lehmann
In my opinion, and what I have experienced even last season when I came there to coach, Steve Bould and Neil Banfield, the reserve coach, they taught me a lot of things, and I was a little bit sad when Arsene called them into his coaching team.  But you see the benefit of appointing them as coaches there already, because Arsenal had not conceded a goal [up to Sep 12], as the only team of I think 96 teams in England and that's a great achievement. 
Only for three games, but you can already see that there is some progress in that department.  And I hope that there will be a good balance between Arsene’s offensive mind and probably Steve Bould and Neil Banfield’s secure tactics which actually wins you trophies.  And so I’m quite optimistic about the current season and hope of course that Arsenal will win something.
All right there are some teams  like Real Madrid, Barcelona, Man City, Chelsea, who come into the game with big money in the bag, and only one of them can win the trophy because there is competition, which shows you that you have to be better at little details in knowledge, wisdom and approach of your team and of your set-up.
Arsenal always had a great approach, they always made it into the top four with probably the smallest budget of all the big teams now, and so why should it not happen this year that all of a sudden, when nobody expects them to win something, all of a sudden they go on to win something.
Question
Now there is a German element to the Arsenal team?
Jens Lehmann
Now with Lukas Podolski and Per Mertesacker they have two German players who are very experienced because of their caps in the national team of Germany, I think they’re near 100, both of them are near 100 and still at a young age.  They are expecting of course to see them performing three times a week on a high level, so far my impression is that everybody’s quite happy with them, but everybody knows that they still have to improve, to adapt to the English football and to adapt to the pace of the game there.
Lukas and Per are both mentally strong and they have definitely got the potential to perform and to improve their game.
Question
You are patron of a Laureus football project in Germany, can you tell us about this?
Jens Lehmann
I am a patron of a project call Kicking Girls. I think that in recent years girls football came up and sometimes it’s really, really attractive to watch, even my little girl all of a sudden starts to play football because of her bigger brothers and myself, she sees us playing in the garden and so she wants to be involved, and I think it’s a great sport, it’s a team sport which always gives you a lot for life, and particularly with the girls now coming up, and having fun with it, it’s fantastic to see how this whole game, even for the female side, is progressing.
Everybody knows when you donate something to Laureus it’s given for something good, and that’s what actually makes the reputation and when you see the amount of ambassadors and where they are all coming from, from all kinds of sports, and former world class athletes, you see how great, how fantastic a foundation Laureus is.
Question
Next year the 2013 Laureus World Sports Awards will be in Rio de Janeiro.
Jens Lehmann
I’m really looking forward to going, because I’ve never been to Rio, never been to Brazil, and I’ve heard so many great things about it that I’m desperate to go.  It must be fantastic for the Brazilians as there will be these Awards then a year later there will be the World Cup, then two years later there will be the Olympics and the Paralympics, so Brazil is the upcoming country, we know, and I think not only am I excited to go there, the Brazilians, what I’ve heard so far, are building new stadiums, building new infrastructure, and the people who are living there and who are coming over and telling us how it’s all progressing there are quite excited as well.
Question
You mentioned the Paralympics. There is a story that you might be competing in 2016. Could that happen?
Jens Lehmann
So this sports journalist called me and asked me if could imagine playing for the Germany Paralympic football team in 2016, and I was actually silent because I didn’t know what to say, and then he said that only the goalkeeper, among the blind players, is allowed to have sight, and I said “Well I think it would be a little bit disrespectful if I showed up and played there.”
And he said: “No, actually the players and the coaches want you to play, and that’s why I’m asking.”
And so he has asked me and I said why not? 
Let’s see what’s going on in four years. I’ve never taken part in an Olympics, and if that happens, I will be there and play with them.

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