Lothar Matthäus, Germany’s towering giant of world football, comes to town

What you need to know:

  • Looking back on my 40 year journey through Kenya football, Lothar Matthaus’s visit fills me with profound sentiment.
  • For the sake of Kenya, I hope that Matthaus' trip is a catalyst of good things to come.

Five years ago this month, I sat down for three hours over tea and mandazi with Mahmoud Abbas, the goalkeeper that Kenyans of his generation still adoringly call “Kenya One” more than 30 years after the fact. Although I had initiated the discussion, I approached the interview with uneasiness.

He was my old friend and we always regaled each other with stories of days gone by when I used to cover him.

The reason for my anxiety was the agony of having to ask my friend, while looking him in the eye, whether as some of his team mates had told me, he had thrown away an Olympic qualifying game against Libya in Tripoli in exchange for “something small,” as we Kenyans prefer to call a bribe.

Abbas was happy, even eager, to talk about it and he put me at my ease. (I was taught long ago to watch an interviewee’s eyes, the twitch of his or her fingers, the knitting of the brow and general body language because “guilt has the habit of expressing itself involuntarily.”)

The result of the interview was the story I did for this column on September 8, 2012.

Apart from making a credible defence of himself, he was the only player who discussed the technical aspects of that game.

I wrote: “According to Abbas, Mulwa’s plan was to put Jared Ingutia, a deep midfielder who also had good marking skills, on (Fauzi) Isiwi and not let him go. The edict was man-to-man marking.

“Abbas thought otherwise. Never a fan of this strategy, he remarked: ‘That was a big mistake we made. It is the same mistake that Franz Beckenbauer made in the 1986 World Cup final when he ordered Lothar Matthaus to do man-to-man marking on Diego Maradona. Germany lost and that was no surprise. You can’t win by trying to stop the other guys from playing.’”

DEFENDING SKILLS

Next week, I have a chance to ask Lothar Matthaus if indeed that is what cost his country the 1986 World Cup against Argentina.

He will be in town for a series of seminars. I will ask him about the Mexico campaign.

Did Franz Beckenbauer, the one and only Kaiser (Emperor) that the world of football knows, order you to do man-to-man marking on Diego Maradona?

In his book, Yo soy el Diego (I am the Diego), Maradona pays glowing tribute to Matthäus’ defending skills: “He is the best rival I’ve ever had. I guess that’s enough to define him,” the genius who to some people is the greatest man to have played football wrote.

Matthäus is a towering giant of world football.

He was the winning captain of West Germany’s 1990 World Cup campaign and was named the Fifa World Player of the Year the following year, the only German so far to take the accolade.

He played in five Fifa World Cups — 1982, 1986, 1990, 1994 and 1998 — in the process accumulating the record of the most number of World Cup matches played by a single player.

With 150 appearances for both West and the united Germany, he is his country’s most capped player.

He won an Uefa European Cup gold medal in 1980 and also played in three other Euro championships — 1984, 1988 and 2000.

Naturally, the midfielder turned defender made Pele’s list of the 100 greatest living footballers.

The organisers of Matthaus' visit couldn’t have selected a better man to reignite our conversation about what really happened to Kenya’s exceptionally strong ties with German football. Together with Franz Beckenbauer, he is the poster boy of the greatness of German football — a country that has won the Fifa World Cup four times.

Former football player and FC Partizan Belgrade's coach Lothar Matthaus speaks during a press conference in Belgrade on July 29, 2010. PHOTO | ANDREJ ISAKOVIC | AFP

What really happened? Kenyans used to be crazy about Football Made in Germany.

Even now as I write this, I am still hearing the voices of Toby Charles and Allan Fountain.

Their commentaries on the matches of the Bundesliga were a once in a life time experience. I used to take down notes as I watched and listened.

Lothar Matthau’s visit brings all the memories flooding back.

Do you remember Sunday nights on Voice of Kenya TV with Borussia Dortmund versus Fortuna Dusseldorf? Eintracht Frankfurt versus Hamburger SV?

And my favourite, FC Bayern Munich versus FC Koln?

Together with shows such as Derrick, Skyways and The Six Million Dollar Man, life was heavenly.

The English Premier League is certainly the world’s most followed.

It has a fanatical audience in Kenya. Fans here have killed themselves because of what has happened in it. But I miss the ties we had with real winners.
England has won the World Cup only once and doesn’t look like it will do it again in my life time.

Germany is a powerhouse.

We need to restore our once strong relations that gave us the hope of being an African football giant.

Although Kenya’s first contact with Germany was in 1966 by way of the visit of an amateur side, FC Westfalia, our relations seriously began in the 1970s.
Best potential

On May 13, 1971, Dettmar Cramer left Kenya after a three-week coaching tour of the country. These were his parting words: “Of the 15 African countries I have coached, Kenya has the best potential. It may not be the leading African nation now but the talent is there and it has to be exploited.

“This is no lie. I am not a diplomat and I do not go around African countries praising them just to maintain good relations between them and Fifa. I mean what I say.”

At the time he came to Kenya, Cramer was Fifa’s top ranked coach and the most sought after expert on the game in the world. Fifa contracted him to undertake coaching assignments around the world between 1967 and 1974 after he played a notable role as part of West Germany’s coaching staff during the 1966 World Cup.

Cramer then undertook coaching assignments in Japan and the United States before returning to Germany. Because of his expertise in football, he went by the nickname “The Football Professor.”

He remains the technical expert with the biggest name to have worked in Kenya although for only a short time. Such were the high expectations on his arrival in Nairobi that he felt constrained to dampen them at the airport.

He told waiting journalists: “I am not a superman and I don’t work miracles. With only a short time at my disposal, I can only try to do my best.”

Cramer worked with the Kenya national team which at that time was preparing for the following year’s Africa Cup of Nations qualification matches against Mauritius. The team was being handled by Cramer’s compatriot, Eckhardt Krautzun.

For the time that Cramer was here, he assumed an informal oversight role on the team’s technical bench. On May 12, the media reported that he would have a hand in selecting the Kenya team against Mauritius.

That gave the country two eminent Germans at the helm of the future Harambee Stars – and all that for free.

At the end of his stay, Cramer praised Krautzun’s approach and correctly predicted that under his countryman, Kenya was going to qualify for the Nation’s Cup finals in Cameroon. A major development of Cramer’s stay in Kenya was the formation of a Kenya Football Coaches Association. The objective of this move was to give structure to the technical side of the game and make it possible for services to reach the grassroots in a systematic, accountable and sustainable way.

The first chairman of the association was former international Peter Oronge. John Nyawanga, the national team captain, was also a member of the executive committee.

Cramer urged the coaches to develop a unique playing style for Kenya. He pointed out that Morocco, the then top African nation who had made a good run in the 1970 World Cup had their own playing style.

Cramer asked Kenyans to stop their obsession with imitating European or Latin American styles of play.

Forty five years later in 2017, Sunday Oliseh, former captain of Nigeria’s Super Eagles and now a brand ambassador for the Bundesliga said the same thing in almost the same words.

“The technical team and administrators need to sit down and decide how the national team will play. From what I have seen, there is no identity. Is it possession football, direct, or a mixture of both?” Oliseh, a former Borussia Dortmund, FC Cologne and VFL Bochum midfielder asked.

That question would not have arisen if Kenya had paid attention to what Cramer advised us in May 1971.

Apart from Oronge and Elijah Lidonde, notable coaches who trained under Cramer and would later make their mark with the Kenya team were Marshal Mulwa and Mohammed Kheri, both from the Coast.

Kenya Breweries had the bulk of players still in the national team who underwent coaching lessons.

These were Mahmoud Mohammed, Kadir Farrar, Livingstone Madegwa, Ben Waga and John Nyawanga. Gor Mahia had William Ouma and Martin Ouma while Bata Bullets provided Joram Roy and Sammy Nyongesa.

A Kisumu Hot Stars left winger, David Olima, was also nominated to undertake the course.

PROFOUND SENTIMENT

But he was studying medicine at the then University College, Nairobi. His principal declined to release him and he never made it to the Kenya Institute of Administration where the course was taking place.

Looking back on my 40 year journey through Kenya football, Lothar Matthaus’s visit fills me with profound sentiment.

It is the sentiment of hope.

My mind is on the people from Germany we made friends with such as Bernhard Zgoll, Eckhard Krautzun and Reinhardt Fabisch. They helped us go places.

For the sake of Kenya, I hope that Matthaus' trip is a catalyst of good things to come.