How 160 IQ Changed Everything: The Player Who Made Messi Look Human.
So… listen to this… what if there was a player who never had a bad game, not because he was faster, stronger, or more skillful but because he always knew exactly what was about to happen before it did? Phillip Lahm put down thousands of tackles over his career… yet, he never got a red card… and worse, he only ever got shown a yellow on 34 occasions… for comparison, Heung Min Son, a winger who rarely puts in a tackle and is often called “the nicest man in football”… is already on 28… even he is bound to retire with more yellow cards than Lahm… but,
you know what? Most people find that boring… as Jamie Charragher once said: “no one wants to grow up to be a full-back, no one wants to grow up and be Gary Neville” so the same way a crunchy tackle will always be more entertaining than a proper, clean one, you can also show a kid a 5 second clip of some fancy cross by Dani Alves and instantly convince him he was the greatest right back of all time… but not with Lahm… You see, there’s this funny story that is often told to Bayern’s youth players about Lahm… After his first season as a pro, they actually
struggled to find a club that would take him on loan. At one point, a scout was so unimpressed, he demanded Bayern pay him for the gas he had wasted driving to their training grounds to watch him… Regardless, then, Felix Magath took him under his wing at Stuttgart and though Lahm lied to him about his position, as he felt it’d be easier to get in as left back since Stuttgart had German international Andreas Hinkel on the right… Well… one month later, the 19 year old had already benched their other left back and was starting against Man United in the Champions League,
taking the win and immediately getting Sir Alex to approach Magath at full time and inquire about the kid… By February, he had taken the man of the match award on his debut with the national team… By June, he had narrowly lost out on the league’s player of the year award and had been called up for the Euros… So the next time Lahm’s youth coach Hermann Gerland saw that scout, he went up to him, handed him his wallet and asked him to take out however much money he thought he owed him for that trip… that’s the thing about Lahm… no 5 second clip, no single game could do him justice,
he operated several orders of magnitude above of guys like Dani Alves, you’d need to watch him for season after season to fully understand him… and, even then, you know what makes this just sad for guys like Dani Alves? It’s that eventually Lahm would also be asked to put the pedal to the metal and get further up the pitch… and the result were playmaking performances, those other full backs could only dream about, this guy was pulling playmaking numbers that could stack up to Messi himself, he had the kind of football IQ where no matter how you flip it,
he’d always end up on top… even when Guardiola came in and made him play as a midfielder, he instantly became one of the best on the planet… and along the way, made such an impact on Pep, that Messi himself had to forever live with the fact that the other “Magic Dwarf”, the man who captained the team that crushed him in the biggest game of his career… was the one his own mentor c
onsidered “the most intelligent player I’ve ever managed”… and that would define his legacy… All the way back in 2004, when Germany got knocked out in the group stage of the Euros yet again, just as Kahn was on his way to retirement, for the first time in decades, they did not just lack quality, they lacked a leader… but while many tried their luck at taking over that mantle over the coming months, Lahm went through his own personal hell… in 2005, the 21 year old broke his foot and, then, proceeded to blow out his ACL almost immediately upon his comeback… he made just 6 starts that year and by the day the World Cup squad was named,
he had only played 2 matches for his nation in the 18 months that preceded it… However, if it felt like a miracle that his name was there, then, he lined up for their final friendly before the tournament… and broke his elbow… Suddenly, the assumption was that there would be no World Cup for Lahm, yet, as the whole country prepared to feel his absence on opening day, instead, they felt a sense of Deja Vu… 36 years after Beckenbauer had played a World Cup semi final with his arm in a sling, Lahm was lining up alongside his men with his arm in a cast… and if
anyone needed more confirmation that the name that would follow Fritz Walter, Beckenbauer, Matthaus and Kahn was that of Phillip Lahm, the referee blew the whistle… and 6 minutes later, he had scored their first goal… Germany had found their new leader… maybe the only man who could endure the 8 years of heartbreak they still had left… Getting knocked out by the eventual champions only a step away from the final in a World Cup they had organized themselves was too much for most, but Lahm did not even allow himself a second
of rest… determined to make up for lost time as he finally got to play a full season for Bayern, by January he was already being named in UEFA Team of the year… however, there was a reason he was the only Bayern player on the list… they were about to settle for their worst league finish in a decade… After being reunited with his former Stuttgart manager Felix Magath, the two watched in disbelief as their former club took the league title while Bayern couldn’t even secure Champions League football and though that sent
the whole club hierarchy into a state of emergency, first, sacking Magath, then, shipping off 9 players and bringing in 10 new ones to replace them as they immediately brute forced their way towards a domestic treble… it was all smoke and mirrors, the moment a minor injury crisis hit them, Lahm had to play out of position for months in order to prevent their whole system from collapsing… However, no matter how many times he questioned the careless manner in which they had handled that rebuild, the board put him down every single time…
In the summer of 2008, things got heated enough that, as arookie manager named Pep Guardiola took over Barcelona, he almost convinced Lahm to take the easy way out of the chaos that was settling in Munich, yet, with the deal almost closed, Lahm ended up instead renewing his contract in order to stop any transfer market drama from affecting his performances at the 2008 Euros, but first and foremost because, in his own words: “I did not want to seek successful somewhere else, only to one day look back and see that I could have had it all in my hometown”… yet,
after recomposing himself just in time to take the man of the match award as he scored the goal that put Germany in the final of the Euros, not only did he immediately downplay it all, insisting his performance had been only ok and that he had not even deserved the award… but, in the final, he ended being forced off the pitch, injured… watching as the players that could have become his teammates had he moved to Barcelona, snatched the trophy from him… just as all of his worries began coming to life… With yet another managerial change,
as Lahm predicted, Bayern collapsed… in April, Wolfsburg demolished them 5 to 1 in the game that virtually secured their first ever league title and 4 days later, almost like a reenactment of what had happened at the Euros, with Lahm injured, Bayern took a 4 nil defeat to Barcelona that sent them out of the Champions League… Suddenly, new manager Klinsmann was already out, Heynches took over temporarily, then Van Gaal came in and yet, Bayern dropped all the way down to 7th… and Lahm hit a melting point… Against all that came natural to him,
Lahm went up to the press and publicly exposed his discontent with the way the club was being run… he claimed their transfer policies consisted of basically signing one forward after the other with no concern for the team’s balance or tactical philosophy, exposing the complete delusion of higher ups like Franz Beckenbauer himself who insisted this was “the best team they ever had” regardless of the fact they struggled to beat mid table clubs… and what followed was the single largest fine ever issued to a player in Bayern’s history…
but the thing is… what offended the board so much wasn’t that his infraction was that outlandish, but that it hurt their egos that, first, they were starting to see he was right… and second, that the fans were completely on his side… now, many believe that interview was what defined Bayern Munich’s philosophy for the following decade… and that became apparent immediately… If up to that moment, Bayern had 3 wins in their last 11 matches, then, they proceeded to win all of the next 12, quickly finding themselves tied for first in the Bundesliga, before moving their
focus towards the Champions League, twice coming back from first leg defeats… and eventually finding themselves in the Champions League final, one win off a treble… but, of course, that would have been almost too easy… instead, Diego Milito took that trophy back to Milan, and… though that campaign made Lahm such a defining figure in German football that, that very same summer, at the World Cup, he was officially made the youngest captain in the history of the German national team, at just 26 years of age… the same old story took place again…
Germany were out to the eventual champions for the third tournament in a row… and destiny was still not done playing tricks with Phillip Lahm’s mind… With the emergence of Jurgen Klopp’s Dortmund, Bayern’s luck took a downturn yet again the following season and, in what can only be seen as their definite admission of guilt, the board sacked Van Gaal, made Lahm their new captain and handed their former caretaker, Jupp Heynches, a permanent job as first team manager… but though things improved, not only were they not enough to stop Klopp, but after defeating the mighty Real
Madrid of José Mourinho… Lahm found himself about to play a Champions League final, in his hometown, his home stadium, against a Chelsea squad most deemed substantially inferior to them… as Bayern led 2 minutes from the end… Drogba scored, forced the game into extra time and, a
s the commentator put it: “it was like 1999, but worse”… while the casuals rejoiced at that underdog story, in Munich, it became one of their most painful collective memories… That day Lahm had put down maybe the strongest performance of his life… and it still was not enough… just 3 years earlier, having been the one who took the captain’s armband off him, Lahm had seen just how fast the fans turned on Michael Ballack as he lost the 4th international final of his career… and, now, following another near miss at the Euros, he was starting the countdown towards his 30th birthday knowing that, despite close call after close call, he did not
have a single international trophy to his name… so, if he did not want to become just yet another player who never finished the job and left behind only a legacy of defeat after defeat, he had to act immediately… and what followed… was maybe the greatest season ever put down by a fullback… For 3 seasons, Lahm had already put down more tackles per game than the likes of Sergio Ramos, Pepe or Vidic had managed on their greatest ever seasons, but, now, the game was changing… managers began demanding that fullbacks contribute just as much offensively as they did defensively,
but while many veterans get left behind when the game evolves… Lahm adapted so effortlessly, the gap between him and the rest grew even larger… forget Dani Alves, Marcelo, Robertson, Alexander Arnold or Jordi Alba, Lahm was now racking up more assists than any defender I’ve ever seen, in fact, that season, per 90, he was outperforming Messi… he had simply become inevitable… Not only did he become the first defender in Bundesliga history to hit double digits on the assists charts as Bayern finally put Dortmund back in their place and scooped up every domestic
trophy, taking the league title with a record 7 games to spare… but, in the end, they met Dortmund, again, in an all German Champions League final and stomped on them one final time as at 5 months off of his 30th birthday, Phillip Lahm secured the first international trophy of his career and completely redefined what a full back was capable of… If, at the time, the evolution of the role had split them into the modern more offensively minded and the old school more defensively capable… Lahm had embarrassed them all by proving that to conform yourself to
either side was a mere display of mediocrity… he had transcended the role in such an uncompromising manner that, that summer, as Pep Guardiola took over the club and finally got the man he had been dreaming off since his debut season… no matter how many insisted you could not teach an old dog new tricks… only a few weeks into their campaign, right as Bayern trailed behind in the European Supercup, getting suffocated in midfield, Pep could not resist his desire to do the unthinkable… and so, he moved Lahm into midfield… and, an hour later, the trophy was theirs… by January, they had
made it 5 trophies in a year, by March they had broken the all time record again, winning the league with 7 matches to spare and, with his first full season as a midfielder at 30 years of age, Lahm’s adaptation had been so incredible, that, as the World Cup began, Joachim Lowe decided to start him in that same midfield role… only to then surprise France in the quarters by deploying him at right back, keeping him there as he assisted two of the goals in that infamous 7 to 1 demolition of Brazil… and, in the end, Lahm found himself face to face with Lionel Messi, captain vs
captain, in the greatest match of both their lives and, for once, no matter how used Messi was to seeing space where others couldn’t… that day, time and time again, whenever he thought he had found it, Lahm was there to protect it… his performance was a masterpiece… he did not lose a single ground or aerial duel, he did not get dribbled past once, did not make a single foul, played more passes and had more touches than any other player in the pitch… and so, as Messi could only stare at the
trophy that Lahm finally got to bring home with him… it became clear to anyone why, a few months earlier, Guardiola had left out names like Messi, Iniesta and Xavi, to instead name Lahm as “the most intelligent player I’ve ever managed”… Just 5 days after that final, as soon as the celebrations waned down, Lahm announced his retirement from the national team, however, he still had one final gift for us… having just completed football, he began playing with a new level of what can only be described as a calm confidence that made him that much scarier to
face and so… as early as September, in a match against Paderborn, he committed a foul… and then, as the following games came and went, fans began noticing something truly unbelievable… While other defenders kept on making foul after foul, Lahm simply never put a foot wrong… with perfect positioning, timing and anticipation, he no longer even had to touch his opponents in order to stop them… and that streak went on for so long, that in the meantime, he managed to take another Bundesliga title before he made his next foul… which only came 13 months after the previous one…
it was the kind of achievement that had never been done and will likely never be repeated, a task so monumental that, even his 6th place at the Ballon D’Or midway through the season felt like an underestimation of his powers… Phillip Lahm had perfected football… that year had been his magnum opus… then, for the final two seasons of his career, like the true leader he was, he began personally mentoring Joshua Kimmich to take over once he left… and so, at only 33 years old, no matter how much Ancelotti insisted that it was too soon, that “if we had 20 Phillip Lahm’s, we would
have no problems”, he decided to quit while on top, still managing to be named German Footballer Of The Year a month after his retirement… and, now, though he did such a good job that it is hard to argue that Kimmich is the closest thing to him that we have in the current game, most of us still can’t help but to feel that, one way or another, Lahm was the last of his kind…
