Four shots, four goals. Three stationary balls. Two free kicks. A penalty. This penalty from Rome, when Andreas Brehme shot the ball with his right foot past the stretching Argentinian Sergio Goycochea, was the final point of a remarkable World Cup quartet.
Four years earlier, on June 25, 1986 in Guadalajara, Brehme played the first trump card: the (West) Germans played against Michel Platini and his French European champions. After a good eight minutes, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge falls from a free kick from 17 meters. Felix Magath put the ball on Brehme, who shot with his left, the hard-kicked ball slipped under the body of French goalkeeper Joël Bats and into the net. Germany won 2-0.
Brehme with left and right
In the round of 16 of the 1990 World Cup, the Germans were leading 1-0 against the Netherlands when Brehme sent the ball with his right foot on a hyperbolic trajectory past goalkeeper Hans van Breukelen a good five minutes before the end. Germany won 2-1. Ten days later: semi-final against England in Turin, free kick for Germany after just under an hour, Stuart Pearce had fouled Thomas Häßler.
As in Mexico, Brehme is presented with the ball, again he shoots with his left, the ball hits the Englishman Paul Parker, who is rushing towards him, rises and falls steeply, behind goalkeeper Shilton, who was two or three meters in front of the line. The game ends 1:1, Germany won the penalty shootout, 4:3. Also thanks to a penalty from Brehme, which he shot exactly like the one in the final four days later: with his right, hard, flat into the bottom left corner. Untenable.
Photo gallery
Looking back at Brehme’s career: The player who decided the 1990 World Cup final
No other German soccer player has scored a goal in four knockout games won in a World Cup. Helmut Rahn also scored four goals in 1954 and 1958, but lost to France in the third place game in 1958.
Gerd Müller scored more often than Brehme, but had to play three more group games, the so-called second final round, on the way to the 1974 final. Miroslav Klose scored five goals in knockout games, albeit in three tournaments between 2006 and 2014. They all became world champions, their names part of the cross-generational German football narrative.
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A look back at Andreas Brehme’s four World Cup goals (in the 82 other international matches of his career he only scored four more times, never in World Cup group games) shows two things: the great importance of converted dead balls for the national team under Franz Beckenbauer.
And above all, the essential quality without which a football player and his team will never win an international tournament: the will to take responsibility, trusting in their own strength. The European Championships begin in Germany this summer. It’s quite possible that Andreas Brehme will come to mind for many viewers, almost four months after the sad news of his death.
