When Germany’s players realised they would be playing in the 1990 World Cup final thanks to Chris Waddle’s penalty miss, almost all of them celebrated wildly.
Except for Lothar Matthaus.
The driving force behind his nation’s win in Italy and a veteran of two previous World Cups, he wanted to make sure his opponent was alright.
“We won the match when Waddle blasted the decisive penalty over the bar, but I didn’t join in the celebrations with the rest of the German team,” he told fifa.com.
“I went over to console him instead. I could really appreciate what he must have been feeling at the time. I couldn’t help him, but I felt really sorry for him.”
Diego Maradona once said Matthaus is the best rival he ever had. “I guess thats enough to define him, he quipped. He’s wrong. Competing in five World Cups (an outfield record in itself), playing 25 matches and being the driving force behind Germany’s Italia ’90 win are things that defined him.
“It’s a great honour to win the World Cup, not only for the team but also for the captain who’s the first to be given the trophy everyone wants to win,” Matthaus added. “It was a unique sensation. I was afraid of doing something wrong, dropping the trophy.”