Great gesture by both Jens Lehman and the German coaching staff to put Oliver Kahn back in goals for the third place match against Portugal this weekend. Lehman and Kahn are two of the greatest keepers in the world and Kahn is the reigning Golden Ball winner as the most outstanding player in the previous World Cup. Lehman and Kahn had a very tight battle for the starting position on the team, but Lehman won that competition and Kahn was relegated to the bench.

Lehman came out and stated that he would be happy for Kahn to play in the third place game, and despite the German officials saying it wasn’t a ‘thank you’ type gesture to Kahn, it’s obvious that it is because if they made the final, Kahn wouldn’t be playing. It’s nice to see that despite the heated battle to win the top spot, the two still have enough respect for each other to make a gesture like this.

Lehman of Arsenal and Kahn of Bayern Munich shake hands

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 6th, 2006 at 9:15 pm and is filed under Soccer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.