The most responsible place in the world – and the loneliest – can be the goal line during a football game. At times, the last defender’s ability to save a fast ball shot at a difficult angle can save or sink not just the dream of the team but that of also an entire nation.
One person who knows this pressure well is Oliver Kahn, Germany’s legendary goal keeper. A titan of the game, he was voted world goalkeeper of the year thrice and selected as the best player of the World Cup in Japan in 2002.
Recently, he spent a week with 56 young athletes from 24 countries as part of the 2018 Allianz Explorer Camp Football Edition. Kahn found that he was not only helping the younger generation develop skills and attitudes but also learning from them. At a micro-conference last week, ‘King Kahn’, as he was known during his heydays, touched upon five life lessons from football that he revisited during the camp.