Lothar Matthaus Reveals Italian Dream

Date: 14th January 2013 at 4:33pm
Written by:

Speaking with Sky Calcio’s ‘Gods of Football’ programme, former Inter star Lothar Matthaus revealed he would like to return to Italy as a coach, as well as describing his time with Inter as the best of his career.

The German World Cup winner, now 51 years old, spent four seasons in Milan, winning a Serie A title and the 1991 UEFA Cup, and says of that time,”The four years I spent in Italy were the best of my career, and I am not referring only to victories. For Italy I like the mentality of the people, the lifestyle, fashion, cooking,” while maintaining, “I am convinced that between me and Italy there is still a good feeling”.

Matthaus went on to claim that, although he knew Italy was a bit of a ‘closed shop’ in terms of foreign managers (currently only Roma’s Zdenek Zeman and Lazio’s Vladimir Petkovic are non-Italian coaches) but that he “would like to coach in Italy because I appreciate lifestyle, even if the Italian football is not the best as twenty years ago, because in Europe there are countries that are economically healthier”.

Matthaus also rebuked Inter’s decision to let him go in 1992 after he had suffered a serious injury, pointing out that, after returning to Bayern Munich while Inter decided based their team around Ruben Sosa, Igor Shalimov and Darko Pancev, he went on to play in “two more World Cups and win four or five German championships. I demonstrated that Inter had made a mistake”.

His memories of Inter remain fond ones, though, particularly the game against Napoli that clinched the 1988-89 Championship. He said “That victory allowed us to win the Scudetto. It was very exciting, Napoli had won the Championship the year before and arrived in Milan in second place.

“We still had four games left after that, but I think the greatest gift for the fans was to win the Scudetto against Maradona in our stadium. It did not start well, Careca scored a goal and the atmosphere at San Siro was starting to get heavy.

“Then Nicola Berti equalised and six, seven minutes before the end I scored the decisive goal. They’re great memories, not only for me but for the fans that day were at the stadium”.

Matthaus’ is currently unattached, after leaving his last managerial post – that of Bulgaria manager – in 2011. He is revered as one of Germany’s finest ever players, and played for Inter while he was at his peak.

 

Comments are closed.