Lehmann: the maverick who took madness furthest

While it’s a cliche to suggest that all goalkeepers are inherent mentalists, former Arsenal stopper Jens Lehmann certainly lived up to the stereotype. In fact, he took the legend of the maverick goalkeeper to a place where none have dared to venture since.

The legend of the maverick goalkeeper had its roots in the story of Bert Trautmann breaking his neck in the 1956 FA Cup final but really took off in the eighties with the arrival of Rene Higuita and Jose Luis Chilavert on the scene. But if they made eccentric goalkeeping the preserve of South American football, they were rivalled by a generation of rebellious and bullish stoppers in Europe which included Oliver Kahn, Fabien Barthez and the inimitable Jens Lehmann.

Kahn was once sent off while playing for Bayern Munich against Hansa Rostock after going up for a corner and punching the ball into the opposition net with both hands. Barthez famously allowed Paulo Di Canio to score while recreating one of the signature dance moves from Saturday Night Fever, while Lehmann once saw red while at Borussia Dortmund for shoving team-mate Marcio Amoroso, an error of judgement which made him the first Bundesliga goalkeeper to be sent off four times in his career.

That was how he came to earn the nickname ‘Mad Jens’ at Arsenal, an epithet he would live up to with the ultimate moment of madness at the Stade de France in May 2006. There were warning signs that Lehmann’s simmering rage could be self-destructive well before that fateful night in Paris, the most famous being towards the end of Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ season, in the game which would see Arsene Wenger’s team crowned Premier League champions at White Hart Lane. Having come under pressure from Robbie Keane at a corner, Lehmann grabbed his opponent by the head to concede a needless penalty which Keane duly scored.

Former Dortmund manager Matthias Sammer said of Lehmann: “He wasn’t the easiest to work with. He was a real individual.” There was always an air of unorthodoxy around the Essen-born stopper, while he was often characterised as uncompromising, argumentative and even supercilious behind closed doors.

At its best, his individualism was expressed in the form of an authoritative, incontestable command of his area, or even through a goalscoring cameo at a vital time in one particular Ruhr derby. At its worst, it was expressed through his shaky disciplinary record; in Lehmann’s last season at Dortmund he received four yellow and two red cards, this only a year or so after receiving a four-match ban for booting SC Freiburg midfielder Soumaila Coulibaly off the ball.