Farewell to Andreas Brehme, the great German ambidextrous | Soccer | Sports

This penalty in Rome defined Andreas Brehme and his duality, that of the world champion hero who, after having touched the glory of football, experienced the economic miseries of poor management of his financial resources. In recent years there have been reports of troubles with the blond man who played both on the wing and in midfield, hitting the ball with his right hand as well as his left foot. Brehme died in Munich during the night from Monday to Tuesday. He was 63 years old.

Author of the goal which allowed Germany to win the world title in 1990, his death comes a few weeks after that of the coach who led this team, Franz Beckenbauer. Brehme is the first player in this combo to say goodbye. “These are very sad days for German football and for this team,” says Pierre Littbarski, another glory of German football.

Littbarski, Völler, Hassler and Matthäus, winners of that year’s Ballon d’Or, were on the pitch at Rome’s Olympic Stadium when Uruguay’s Codesal awarded a dubious penalty five minutes from time. Matthäus had scored the one that took the team into the quarter-finals against Czechoslovakia and also made no mistake in the decisive penalty shoot-out in the semi-final against England. But he was cleared due to an alleged problem with his shoes and Beckenbauer singled out Brehme to challenge Argentine goalkeeper Goycoechea, the most credentialed penalty taker at the moment.

A few years ago, a German television channel contacted them to delve into the intra-story of this episode: “I knew you were going to throw it to my right,” the goalkeeper told him. What he didn’t know was that Brehme, who was ambidextrous although he was more comfortable with his left foot, who excelled in fouling, was going to take the maximum penalty with his right hand. “I had been hit in the left leg and I thought it was safer to use my right leg,” explained the German. In fact, from eleven meters away, he always felt safer with his right.

That year, he won the Bronze Ball, after Matthäus and Totó Schillaci and ahead of Paul Gascogne and Franco Baresi. He then played at Inter, where he arrived after a few seasons at Bayern and the start of his professional career at Kaiserslautern, which ended up becoming the club of his heart. He returned in 1993 after a campaign in Zaragoza marred by disagreements with coach Víctor Fernández, with whom, however, some time later he established good relations.

Brehme had married Pilar, a girl from Utebo, Germany, and had a certain friendship with president Arturo Beltrán, so it did not seem like a bad fate given that the conditions were not right to join Hamburg, the club of his city and the one in which I dreamed of playing when I was a child. When he arrived at Zaragoza he was already considered a winger, but in reality he had barely had any continuity in that position at Inter and now the national team. And the disagreements with the coach are due to his stubbornness in lining up in midfield. When ten days remaining, he refused to play as a full-back in a match against Tenerife, the club released him.

He returned to Kaiserslautern, where he lived on a roller coaster: in 1996, when he was already thinking about retirement, he won the Cup and was relegated to the Second Division. “I fell into the mud and I will get out of it,” he assured. The team was promoted the following year and back among the bigs, they won the Bundesliga. At that moment, he hangs up his boots and begins a new life where new blows and an all too early death await him.

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