Interview by
Javier Cáceres
The year 2020 ended with a remarkable honor for Lothar Matthäus: The magazine France Football elected him to the “Ballon d’Or” dream team, a historic world team with the best footballers in history. Matthäus, Germany’s record national player with 150 games, was largely in agreement with the composition of this team. The nomination of the Russian goalkeeper Lev Yashin surprised him (“I would have taken Manuel Neuer”), as did that of the Spaniard Xavi. The fact that Matthäus himself, alongside Franz Beckenbauer, became part of this imaginary team, was for him renewed evidence that in Germany people often do not have a clear idea of the world rankings of the best footballers in the Federal Republic: “Sometimes I mean, you We don’t even know what kind of ambassadors of the country we are, and don’t really indulge ourselves, “he says.
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