By DPA
Munich : Germany’s national soccer team goalkeeper Oliver Kahn will end his illustrious professional football career in May in India before being honoured with an official farewell match in his native Germany in September.
A May 27 match in Kolkata against the Mohan Bagun club is the last of three games Kahn’s club Bayern Munich plan to play in Asia after the completion of the Bundesliga season.
“(It is) the last game of Oliver Kahn,” said Munich chairman Karl-Heinz Rummenigge Tuesday.
Munich, who currently holds a seven-point lead at the top of the Bundesliga standings, will depart for Asia on May 18 and play matches in Jakarta against Indonesia on May 21 and in Guangzhou, China, against China’s Olympic team for the Beijing games.
Kahn is immensely popular in Asia after he single-handedly led Germany to the final of the 2002 World Cup in South Korea and Japan and was named Most Valuable Player of the event.
The 37-year-old earned 86 caps for Germany from 1995 to 2006 in a career spanning two decades. He joined Munich in 1994 from SC Karlsruhe and won seven league titles, five German cups, the 1996 UEFA Cup and 2001 Champions League with Germany’s number one club.
His final match will be in Munich, as the German football federation DFB announced that the former national team captain Kahn would be honoured with an official farewell match on Sep 2 between the German national team and Bayern.
“Oliver Kahn is an outstanding athlete and extraordinary person,” said DFB boss Theo Zwanziger.
Kahn said: “It won’t be easy for me to quit after 20 years. But I am looking forward to Sep 2. It will be a great football occasion and it is a big honour for me that the Germany team and Bayern are playing for my farewell match.”