Lothar Matthäus: the captain who played five World Cups

Few players have played at the top for as long as Lothar Matthäus. He was at the 1980 European Championship and at the 2000 edition, twenty years later. But he belongs, above all, to 1990, the year in which he captained West Germany to the World Cup and won the Ballon d'Or.

He started as a goalscoring midfielder and finished as a sweeper who organised the defence. In between he won titles in Germany and Italy, and lost the two Champions League finals that Bayern could not close.

The numbers

The chart tells the story of a career in two halves. The first is that of a forward-running midfielder, with his highest numbers at Bayern and in his best year at Inter. The second, after 1992, is that of a deeper player whose goals dry up while his influence does not.

Gladbach and the first Bayern

Matthäus played five seasons for Borussia Mönchengladbach from 1979, and in 1984 moved to Bayern Munich. He won the Bundesliga in each of his first three years there, 1984–85, 1985–86 and 1986–87, and the DFB-Pokal in 1986.

The one that got away was the 1987 European Cup final. Bayern led 1–0 for most of the match, but FC Porto scored two late goals to win. It would not be the last time a final slipped from him.

Inter: the years in Milan

In 1988 he joined Inter Milan with his team-mate Andreas Brehme. He won Serie A at once, in 1988–89, and the Italian Supercup that summer. In 1991 Inter beat Roma in the UEFA Cup final, and in the same year Matthäus was named FIFA World Player of the Year. His best season for goals, 1990–91, came on the back of the World Cup.

Italia 90

West Germany arrived at the 1990 World Cup with Matthäus as captain, and he scored four goals, including two in a 4–1 group win over Yugoslavia. In the quarter-final against Czechoslovakia he scored the only goal, a penalty in the 25th minute.

Rome, 8 July 1990

The final was at the Stadio Olimpico against Argentina. West Germany won 1–0, with Brehme scoring a penalty in the 85th minute. Matthäus was the first player to receive the trophy, as captain, and he admitted afterwards that he had been worried about what to do with it.

"I was afraid of doing something wrong, dropping the Trophy."

— Matthäus on lifting the World Cup in 1990, FIFA.com interview, 3 May 2007

That year he won the Ballon d'Or, the IFFHS World's Best Player award, the World Soccer Player of the Year award and the World Cup Silver Ball. It was the last World Cup won by West Germany before reunification.

The trophies

The second Bayern

He returned to Bayern in 1992 and stayed eight years. The 1990s brought three more Bundesliga titles, a DFB-Pokal and the UEFA Cup. His position changed, and by 1994 he was captaining Germany as a sweeper at the World Cup.

The 1999 final

In the 1999 Champions League final at Camp Nou, Bayern led Manchester United 1–0. Matthäus was substituted in the 80th minute. In injury time United scored twice and won. He took off his runners-up medal immediately after receiving it.

His last match for Bayern was a 4–1 Champions League win over Real Madrid on 8 March 2000. He then played for the MetroStars in Major League Soccer from March to October, making 16 appearances without a goal, and retired afterwards.

Germany: five World Cups

He missed Euro 1992, which Germany lost in the final to Denmark, through injury. After 1994 he was left out of the squad, because of feuds with the captain Jürgen Klinsmann and the coach Berti Vogts, and he missed the Euro 1996 that Germany won without him.

His last tournament was Euro 2000, where he won his final three caps, the last of them his 150th, against Portugal. Germany went out in a disastrous first round.

Records

Why he is remembered

Matthäus was a footballer of two kinds, and he was great in both. He was a midfielder of power and goals in Munich and Milan, and later a sweeper who could play for his country in five World Cups. He did not always avoid controversy. But the record, a World Cup, a Ballon d'Or and a career that lasted from 1979 to 2000, makes him one of the defining German players of his time.