DORTMUND, Germany (AP) – Jens Lehmann launched all 6-foot-4 of himself to the right, the way he had thousands of times before, fingertips extended like a brush trying to paint the night sky.
The left-footed shot off Fabio Grosso’s foot was curling back, back, back toward Lehmann, and for the briefest of moments, looking desperately for the slightest touch of ball to glove, all he was hoping to do was buy himself a little more time. Make the save, extend the game to a penalty shootout, and take his chances there.
Yet a heartbeat later, Lehmann’s worst fears were confirmed. The ball slipped past and rippled the chords of the net just inside the far post. And then a minute later, attacker Alessandro Del Piero waltzed into the goalbox free as you please and put another one past Lehmann, this time just inside the other post.
All of a sudden, all those nervy standoffs that the goalkeeper won, the gut-wrenching penalty shootout against Argentina and the four other countries he parried aside on this intoxicating run, felt like they never happened.
Italy 2, Germany 0 in Tuesday night’s World Cup semifinal wasn’t the end of the road for Lehmann by any means. Come fall, he will return to his club team, English powerhouse Arsenal, and maybe the season will end just as spectacularly as the last one, with another challenge for the Champions’ League Cup.
But it will be a long time before Lehmann can focus on anything but that curling shot.
After sitting on the bench for years, he finally climbed out of the shadow of national hero Oliver Kahn. It took a boost from coach Juergen Klinsmann, whose decision evoked howls of protest across the land. But when it was over, neither had anything to apologize for. Kahn made that much clear when he walked through the scattered celebrations of the Italians just after the final whistle and embraced his teammate and sometimes rival.
“Every one of them is hugely disappointed,” Klinsmann said afterward. “That’s just normal. That’s just the emotions of this. They all had big dreams, they all had big goals and that was to play in the final on Sunday. The dream didn’t come true. It’ll take some time to swallow.
“Jens,” he added, “played a fantastic tournament.”
There was a time, not so long ago, when putting “Lehmann” and “World Cup” in the same sentence would have drawn laughs.
His career got off to the rockiest of starts just down the road from here with a club called Schalke, which just happens to be Dortmund’s most hated rival. In a game against Bayer Leverkusen in 1993, Lehmann let in three horrible goals, was pulled after just 45 minutes and kept on walking – out of the stadium and straight to the train stop, not bothering to wait for the team bus.
It took him almost four years of solid play to wipe that slate clean – clean enough, at least, to make the move to Italian club AC Milan. But there, too, Lehmann got off to a troubling start. Handed his walking papers after just five games, he returned to Germany to start all over again – coincidentally enough, with Dortmund in this same stadium. His game was much better, but his temper hadn’t changed one bit. By the time Lehmann left the Bundesliga again, this time to join Arsenal in July 2005, he took a dubious record – the only goalkeeper ever shown the red card five times.
So when he turned the No. 1 job over to Lehmann, Klinsmann knew he hadn’t lost his fire. After all, his nickname is “Crazy Jens,” and just months earlier, playing for Arsenal against Barcelona in that Champion’s League final, Lehmann rushed out of the box and cut down forward Samuel Eto’o.
That earned him another red card and the distinction of being the only player sent off in the final.
So what Klinsmann wondered about instead was whether Lehmann was cool enough to shoulder his nation’s hopes in the biggest tournament of all. That question was answered when Germany’s quarterfinal against Argentina went to a penalty-kick shootout.
Four times the Argentians fired from the spot, and twice they were thwarted. Before facing the kicks, Lehmann reached into his sock and pulled out a sheet of paper the German staff had put together on each shooter’s tendencies and studied it.
That singular performance so unnerved the Italians as the semifinals wore on – through 90 minutes of regulation and nearly all 30 minutes of overtime – that coach Marcello Lippi put four forwards out on the field in the final few minutes to avoid facing Lehmann in another shootout.
A joke on the front page of Tuesday’s Gazzetta dello Sport even guessed what Klinsmann would write on the sheet of paper he handed Lehmann if the two teams went to penalties.
“Si nu pari, te spezzu u collu,” it read – “If you don’t make these saves, I’m going to break your neck.”
It never came down to that, largely because a deft touch by Italian attacker Andrea Pirlo set up Grosso from point-blank range, and then Del Piero applied the finishing touch.
And soon after, Lehmann’s counterpart, Italian keeper Gianluigi Buffon, breathed a long sigh of relief.
“I believe in destiny on penalty kicks,” he said.
But even he wouldn’t have bet against Lehmann.
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Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitkeap.org
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