Latest news with #OliverKahn
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
🎥 OTD 2001: Bayern Munich won their fourth UCL trophy in dramatic fashion
Only Real Madrid and Milan have won more Champions League/European Cups than Bayern Munich, but the gap between their third and fourth title was an agonising and pain-riddled 25 years. On this day in 2001, Oliver Kahn's heroics saw them end that wait in a dramatic all-penalty final. Bayern's first three European Cups came in successive seasons, as Franz Beckenbauer, Gerd Müller and co. ruled with both club and country in the mid-to-late 1970s. 1982 saw a final loss to Aston Villa, before Porto stunned them five years later with a late comeback. Things got worse in 1999 when Manchester United famously won with even later goals in Barcelona, and the scars had yet to heal by 2001. That appeared obvious when Gaizka Mendieta opened the scoring from the spot inside three minutes, and even more so when Mehmet Scholl missed another penalty minutes later. Stefan Effenberg would level things up with the third penalty of normal time, before Kahn became immortalised in the shootout. Bayern have since been crowned kings of Europe in 2013 and 2020, but for many, the 2001 win remains the most important in the club's recent history. 📸 GABRIEL BOUYS
The Guardian
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Rematch packs five-a-side football with sweaty thrills
In the early 00s, offbeat sports games were king. From the slam-dunking shenanigans of NBA Street to Mario Strikers' show-stopping absurdity, once serious competitions were reimagined as wonderfully silly grudge matches. Yet as the live service era arrived, sport sims became less about pulse-pumping plays, and more about collecting increasingly expensive virtual trading cards. Enter Rematch, a refreshingly action-packed reimagining of the beautiful game. Channelling the scrappy thrills of Powerleague five-a-side, Rematch sidelines Fifa's team-focused tactics to put you in the studded boots of a single player. With controls like a third-person action game, developer Sloclap channels its martial arts-heavy experience with previous titles Sifu and Absolver into creating weighty, skill-driven football. It's wonderfully agile, fast and furious stuff. Passes are delivered manually, shots are curled in the heat of the moment, and goalies come sprinting down the halfway line like an Oliver Kahn possessed. Gratuitous slide tackles and bicycle kicks are the order of the day, and as my teammates and I score our respective half-line screamers, I can't stop grinning. 'Fifa is a football simulation and Rematch is a football player simulation,' says creative director, Pierre Tarno. 'In gaming this kind of pass to volley kick action simply does not exist any more. So, we thought: 'Let's make it happen!'' Where Sifu had you knocking seven shades of chi out of a slew of martial arts masters, Rematch channels similarly reflex-testing gameplay into a kickabout. Thanks to the high level of player control, matches get surprisingly sweaty surprisingly quickly. Without 10 other controllable players to consider, Rematch is a game of constant movement. Sprinting costs precious stamina, and holding the 'run' button constantly à la Fifa is a swift way to fumble your shot. Thankfully, you've got a trick hidden under your knee pads. A tap of the bumper lets off a sudden, swift burst of speed. Tied to a separate meter, this emergency boost is great for chasing down the striker in your box or for ditching that defender snapping at your heels. Soon you're balancing midfield and defensive play on the fly and charging into goalmouth scrambles in authentically scrappy fashion. Sporting an art style that's part Breath of the Wild, part French impressionism, anime-esque speed lines follow your player as you sprint across each lusciously rendered pitch. Scoring a goal warps the virtual environment around you, the stage's backdrop transforming Smash Bros-style, to match the leading team's home stadium, as the ball hits the back of the net in an explosion of colour. According to Tarno, Rematch's visuals were an attempt to recreate the look of soft dreamy paintings inside immersive 3D stadiums. Yet despite its endearingly cartoony look, there's a welcome lack of screen-filling super moves and gravity defying feats. 'We once had wall-running built into the game,' he says, 'but it was a little too far from the credible football fantasy that we were aiming for.' This is a world that's bright in aesthetic and outlook. Set in 2065, instead of taking place inside video games' usual grimdark dystopia, Sloclap offers a refreshingly optimistic view of the future, the environments focused on renewable energies and natural landscapes. One stadium is encased in a dam that generates hydraulic power, another sees your match unfolding nestled under a hillside with spinning wind turbines. 'We wanted to dream up a world in which mankind has made the right choices, in which cooperation and resilience are shared values, on and off the pitch,' says Tarno. 'It's really about the joy of playing with friends.' Once the controls finally click, I am fully invested in my ramshackle team. Just like Sloclap's previous output, Rematch is about mastery, a game where your avatar starts off at the height of their powers – it's just up to you to figure out how best to wield them. It helps that in Rematch's world, offsides, fouls and – mercifully – VAR are a thing of the past, with futuristic footie letting nothing slow the action. 'I think players who aren't fans of football will be surprised that they can still enjoy a football game, because it's intense and dynamic,' says Tarno. As Rematch is online-only, a ball call system lets players raise their hand as they shout and request the ball, with players also able to track the position of the ball – and their teammates – on an FPS-style minimap. There's more than a touch of Overwatch to Rematch's futuristic footie. The squad-led approach and precise manual aiming mean it feels just as satisfying to set up a goal as it does to score one. Rematch also shares a sense of arcade kinship with Rocket League – yet where Psyonix's unstoppable hit sees players launching their Hot Wheels-esque vehicles into comically large footballs, Rematch delivers a more plausible approximation of the game. Rematch is filled with fun player customisation, allowing you to design everything from home and away kits to picking your avatar's piercings. In keeping with its more inclusive vision of the future, there's a vitiligo selector and even options for customisable prostheses for your player. Rematch will be a paid release, and I'm told that around half of cosmetic items will be unlockable through play, with additional items sold via in-game currency. Regardless of price point, Tarno is acutely aware that only one thing truly matters. 'There's no secret formula to game development,' he says. 'The only way to make a commercial success is to make a very good game. It's truer in games than any other entertainment industry … gamers are a very discerning audience. They are often very analytical, very precise in their assessment of mechanics and what works and what doesn't … If the game is not good enough, it simply won't succeed.' This month's open beta will be crucial to fine-tuning Rematch. So far at least, it's been a promising first half. I came into my demo expecting Mario Strikers-esque throwaway fun, and left with sweat-drenched hands. Sloclap's mission is to bring a sense of fun back into virtual football, and based on what I've seen bandied about this colourful pitch so far, Rematch has the depth to make it to the big leagues. Rematch is released on PC, PS5 and Xbox in summer 2025
Yahoo
11-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Former Bayern CEO Kahn criticizes club for lack of support for Eberl
Oliver Kahn, Then Munich CEO, is pictured during pre-match interview before the 2023 UEFA Champions League quarter-finals second leg soccer match between Bayern Munich and Manchester City at Allianz Arena. Former FC Bayern Munich CEO Oliver Kahn has criticized the club's leadership for failing to publicly back its board member for sport, Max Eberl, amid ongoing speculation about his future. Sven Hoppe/dpa Former FC Bayern Munich CEO Oliver Kahn has criticized the club's leadership for failing to publicly back its board member for sport, Max Eberl, amid ongoing speculation about his future. "In the past, it was not a good sign when names were repeatedly circulated in public," Kahn told the Bild newspaper in an interview published on Friday, referring to speculation about potential replacements for Eberl. Advertisement Kahn said Eberl deserved a certain level of support and trust from the club's hierarchy. Allowing such speculation to persist without clarification only made his job harder and weakened his standing, the former German goalkeeper added. Eberl has faced public scrutiny during his time at Bayern, especially after his remarks about the impending departure of club legend Thomas Müller appeared to conflict with those of honorary president Uli Hoeness. Last week, Eberl acknowledged that he may have misjudged the situation when, back in January, he suggested that formal contract talks with Thomas Müller wouldn't be necessary. At the time, he said: "When he says he wants to continue, we'll look each other in the eye, check the squad, and it will continue." Advertisement The comment implied that Müller simply needed to give the green light for a renewal. Reflecting on it now, Eberl admitted the comment was driven by emotion. "Maybe I wasn't clever to say that," he told Sport1 TV. "I was simply emotional because I couldn't imagine a Bundesliga, an FC Bayern without Thomas Müller at that time." Meanwhile, speculation continues to swirl around Bayern's potential interest in Mario Gomez, currently part of RB Leipzig's management, as well as Austria's national coach Ralf Rangnick, who has also been linked with the club.
Yahoo
26-02-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Frans Hoek: At the Forefront of the Goalkeeper's Evolution
Over the past three decades, no position on the football pitch has undergone such a rapid transformation as the goalkeeper role. Back in the early 1990s, the world's best goalkeepers were physically imposing brutes like Oliver Kahn and Peter Schmeichel who were solely tasked with keeping the ball out of the back of the net; they didn't have the technical acuity and knowhow to advance the ball in possession apart from simply lumping it up the pitch. Fast forward to today, and these players are now occupied with a litany of different jobs from dribbling out of pressure to breaking the lines with a carefully weighted pass to charging off their line and intercepting danger. The biggest reason for this metamorphosis has been the back-pass rule, which prohibits goalkeepers from handling the ball after it was deliberately kicked to them by a teammate or sent to them via a throw-in from a teammate. This rule was introduced in the summer of 1992 to discourage time-wasting and overly defensive tactics after the 1990 FIFA World Cup was widely condemned as excessively monotonous and rife with back-passing, with goalkeepers holding onto the ball to waste time. During this tournament, Irish goalkeeper Packie Bonner held the ball for nearly six minutes in their match against Egypt. Suddenly, goalkeepers had a new set of rules to comply with: if they somehow forgot and handled the ball to pick up a ball, they would concede an indirect free kick. 'I remember when teams used to just score a goal and then turn around from the halfway line and whack it back to their goalkeeper,' stated Mark Bosnich, who was 20 years old when the rule was enforced and making the move from Australia to England. Over the next decade, he would emerge as a key figure in goal for Aston Villa, Manchester United and the Australian national team. 'It's definitely improved the game's entertainment value,' said Bosnich of the back pass rule. 'It's definitely changed the game for the better and sped things up.' Apart from the back pass rule, the biggest reason for the goalkeeper's transformation has been the advent of the goalkeeper coach. Today, every single football club has at least one goalkeeper coach – in fact, many of them have three or four. However, back in 1986, the goalkeeper coach didn't even exist. Enter: Frans Hoek. Born in Hoorn, the Netherlands, Hoek started his development with amateur club SV Always Forward, where he played from 1966 to 1973, before departing for Volendam, who agreed to pay for his studies as long as he played for them. While he was originally not making a salary, this changed after a handful of games, with Hoek enjoying a fruitful 12-year professional career with Palingboeren. Hoek was one of the 90 applicants who were chosen to undergo one of the nation's most exhaustive sports graduate programs and decided to focus on the goalkeeper position. Unfortunately for him, there were no instructional or tactical books to help guide him through his research, so he asked the Dutch Football Federation to contact their English counterparts and send them literature, who submitted books about the lives of the most famous goalkeepers of the time. 'I went back to my teacher, who was also a professional coach, and said, 'I want to give up because I can't find anything',' stated Hoek. 'He said, 'No, you chose it, so you're going to make a thesis on it.' He knew, of course, that there was nothing available. That was the start for me, the basis of my motivation and the base of why I think differently from most people.' 'I had to think 'How do I get information for my thesis?' I went to the local newspaper and asked for all kinds of pictures of goalkeepers, and they gave me a whole package and allowed me to keep it because it was so old.' 'It was New Year's Eve 1973, my parents were away, and I started to put all of these pictures on the ground of goalkeepers catching, punching, falling, diving, throwing and kicking, and the next step was searching for all kinds of interviews with goalkeepers and reading them. There was nothing at first, so I had to investigate, 'How can I get something to make something?' That has been the base for everything I do nowadays.' Eventually, he cobbled together a thesis which amazed his teacher so much that he convinced Hoek to convert it into a book: 'Alles over de doelverdediger,' or 'So You Want to be a Goalkeeper.' One day, as Hoek was getting ready to play a match against Feyenoord,, he was approached by Johan Cruyff, the greatest Dutch player of all time, who told him that his book was fantastic. A few years later, as both Hoek and Cruyff were transitioning from their playing days into a new career, the 'Flying Dutchman' asked Hoek if he wanted to join his technical staff at Ajax. 'Cruyff called me and that was basically a miracle. I first thought it was a joke, but it was really him. He said, 'I know goalkeeper specialists don't exist, but can we have a chat?' It was a magical meeting, and for me, it was completely new because I never actually coached a team, I had only done demonstrations and camps before.' Back in the mid-80s, goalkeeper coaching solely consisted of an assistant firing shots at a goalkeeper or sending up crosses for him to collect. In fact, they'd often be training on an entirely different pitch from their teammates. This changed with Hoek; two weeks into his Ajax tenure, Hoek complained to Cruyff that Ajax's goalkeeper Stanley Menzo would leave his line when he should be staying put and that he stays on his line when he should be coming off it to sweep up danger. He said that he didn't have the players to practice covering huge spaces, and as such, Menzo's only training would come during actual football matches. Cruyff agreed, and, much to Hoek's bewilderment, decided to send him the entire squad to work with on Thursday. Hoek barely slept that entire week, knowing that if he failed to engineer the perfect training session, his career would be over before it began. Nevertheless, he managed to convince the players and Cruyff, who agreed to give him access to the entire squad every Thursday from that point onwards. Over the next four decades, Hoek has worked as an assistant coach at Manchester United, Ajax, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, as well as other national teams like the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia and Poland. He has worked with goalkeepers including Edwin van der Sar, Víctor Valdés, Vítor Baía, Pepe Reina, and David de Gea and helped usher in a new form of goalkeeper training with his 'Goalplayer' program, which helps develop goalkeepers who could then be integrated into the team's build-up play, offering masterclasses, courses, and lectures to coaches, teams, and goalkeepers. And today, he's got a new challenge on the horizon: joining Robin van Persie as the new assistant coach at Feyenoord. Zach Lowy
Washington Post
24-02-2025
- Business
- Washington Post
Bordeaux's mayor buoyed by Kahn's bid to buy the city's struggling soccer club
PARIS — Bordeaux's mayor is doing his bit to help the city's struggling soccer club and welcomes the prospect of Oliver Kahn taking over. Kahn was among the best goalkeepers in the world with Bayern Munich and Germany. He is in discussions to buy Bordeaux, a six-time French champion that has fallen all the way to French soccer's fourth tier with debts of 118 million euros ($124 million).
