World Cup ‘94: 3 Days and Counting : Germany’s Driving Force : Lothar Matthaeus the Engine Behind His Nation’s Defense of Its Title

Lothar Matthaeus represents the finest in German engineering. Lift the hood on the German national soccer team and hear his throaty rumble. While others are taken by showroom models--your Romarios and Valderramas--the Germans are driven to success by Matthaeus’ tireless, powerful, dependable pistons.

“He is not a leader with elegance,” Wolfgang Niesbach, the German press officer, explained. “He’s not the leader with the most intelligence. He’s a leader because of his power.”

The 33-year-old Matthaeus is not ready for the scrap heap. In German football lore, only Franz Beckenbauer is more revered. Once, a club manager said of Matthaeus: “The day shall come when I will read in a Friday paper how well Matthaeus played on Saturday.”

Hardly what you would call a Bavarian brute at 5-feet-10 and 165 pounds, Matthaeus plays a much larger game.

Stories of his stamina are

legendary. First on the practice field and last to leave, he routinely runs younger mates into the ground.

Germany, not self, comes first. In the 1986 World Cup, playing with a broken wrist, Matthaeus set out to guard Argentina’s Maradona, then the world’s best player. Matthaeus said broken legs would not have kept him from his appointed pounds.

“When I think of Matthaeus, I always have this vision of him getting the ball in midfield and just running past people for 30, 40 yards with the ball,” said Sigi Schmid, the U.S. national team’s assistant coach. “He can just bring the ball up so fast. He’s not really a playmaker, but is asked to be a dynamo, the engine. It’s like, ‘OK guys, get on my back and I’ll carry you with me.’ ”

In the 1990 World Cup, Matthaeus stormed Italy like a runaway truck.

As captain and attacking midfielder for Coach Beckenbauer’s brigade, Matthaeus scored four goals in leading West Germany to its third title.

Four years later, Matthaeus returns in a new position, with a new disposition, and is quite confident Germany can successfully defend its World Cup title.

This time, Matthaeus actually has something to prove.

Although his legend is secure, much has changed since Italy. His marriage to childhood sweetheart Sylvia has dissolved. In 1992, while playing for Italy’s Inter Milan, Matthaeus ruptured knee ligaments against Parma.

Convinced that Matthaeus was finished, Inter Milan sent him packing.

“The Italian president and trainer thought the same, that Matthaeus was finished, “ Matthaeus said last week from Nottawasaga, Canada, where the German team was training. “For me, it was new motivation for coming back.”

Surgery was performed in Vail, Colo., by Dr. Richard Steadman, the orthopedic surgeon who has reconstructed the wounded knees of notable athletes, particularly skiers. It was Steadman who 10 years ago pieced together the shredded knee of Luxembourg skier Marc Girardelli, who returned to win an unprecedented five World Cup overall titles.

“I have to say to Dr. Steadman many times, thanks,” Matthaeus said. “For me, he’s the greatest. It was a hard injury. I was 31 years old. For many players with that injury, they would be finished.”

Following his rehabilitation, which forced Matthaeus to miss the 1992 European Championships, he returned to his old club, Bayern Munich, where Matthaeus had played from 1984 to ’88.

There, he would strengthen his bond to Beckenbauer, who has long ties to the club.

At Bayern Munich, the Germans would tinker with the Matthaeus machinery, change him from a midfielder to a defensive sweeper.

In the 1970s, Beckenbauer revolutionized the game as an attacker from the sweeper position.

Matthaeus had no qualms about making the change. In preparation for the national team, he played the sweeper role this season and led Bayern Munich to the German club championship.

“For me it was no problem,” Matthaeus said. “I had played 14 years in the middle field, but I am happy with this new position. It’s an important position for the team. I can order the plays from behind, and I have many choices. And when we have the ball, I can go in the middle of the field.”

The downside is that Matthaeus--now a roving defensive back, sort of soccer’s version of Ronnie Lott--is farther from the opposing goal.

“There was big discussion about it, that we’d miss him in the midfield,” Niesbach said. “It is logical, that from the midfield the other goal is closer. He will not be attacking so often, but when he does, when he sees the chance to play offense, it’s also going to be a big surprise for the other team.”

Despite the similarities, no one is ready to compare Matthaeus with Beckenbauer, who led West Germany to World Cup titles as both a player and a coach. Yet, Matthaeus recently broke Beckenbauer’s German record of 103 international matches.

“Franz is in another light,” Niesbach said. “Franz is ‘Der Kaiser.’ ”

Matthaeus knows his place.

“He was and is the first person of soccer in Germany,” Matthaeus said. “Beckenbauer is the greatest. He was my trainer on the national team and last year my trainer on the club team. But for me, he’s not only a trainer, he’s a friend.”

The coronation of Beckenbauer has as much to do with the German’s grace off the field.

Matthaeus, by contrast, has always been rough around the edges, a man who lived the way he played. In earlier days, he was a noted womanizer and pub hopper. Once, after a night on the town, he crashed his car into a garden fence. Matthaeus lost his license for eight months.

“Beckenbauer was an outstanding person, not just in football, but in the whole German society,” Niesbach said.

“Franz is a gentleman, Lothar is a power man. Lothar, he is always a boy in the middle of life. If you drink beer, Lothar drinks one, too. If we were thinking how to speak to the girl, he was together with the girl.”

Matthaeus has reportedly mellowed, and in January, he remarried.

His new wife, Lolita Morena, is Swiss and works for Swiss and Italian television networks.

Despite his social shortcomings, Matthaeus may be destined to follow in Beckenbauer’s enormous boot steps.

Some have suggested that Matthaeus might be in line to become German national coach, perhaps early in the next century.

Matthaeus does not think that far ahead.

“I have a new contract in Munich for the next three years,” Matthaeus said.

“I think for me, I should go on with the next three years. What is after the next three years, I don’t know. To me, what’s important is the World Cup and the next two or three years in Munich. What is later, I must look.”

Matthaeus, though, thinks he would make a good coach.

“I think, yes,” he said. “When I see the good coaches in the world, they have spent a lot of time playing football.”

But first things first.

“I am just happy I can play football,” he said. “After my injury two years ago, my head was empty. I think it’s finished for me. Later, I came back. For me, that’s the greatest. That I can play this sport.”

World Cup Player at a Glance

Name: Lothar Matthaeus.

Born: March 21, 1961, Erlangen, Germany.

Height: 5-10.

Weight: 165 pounds.

Position: Defender-sweeper.

Club: Bayern Munich.

National team debut: 1980, vs. Holland.

Caps (international matches): 112.

Goals scored: 19.

Little-known fact: In between reckless games of soccer in his youth, he studied interior design and decorating.

Honors: In 1990, he was named European footballer of the year and was World Soccer player of the year. He led Bayern Munich to the West German Championship in 1985, ’86 and ‘87, and led Inter Milan to the Italian championship in 1989 and the UEFA Cup in 1991.