Never mind Zinedine Zidane. When it comes to record transfers, the man with a suitcase permanently at the ready is Lutz Pfannenstiel, a globetrotting German who’s just signed for his 24th club.
After Malaysia, Canada, Australia and Albania — to name but a few — Pfannenstiel recently headed for Norway, where last week he signed a contract as player-coach of Oslo-based third-division club Mangerud Star.
The career of the 35-year-old goalkeeper certainly doesn’t compare to that of the world’s most expensive player, France’s Zidane, who moved from Juventus to Real Madrid for US$100 million.
But he has probably seen more of the world as well as experiencing at first hand the game’s underbelly.
It has also given him, in place of a bulging trophy haul, a unique title — he is the first professional footballer to have played on the six continents defined by world governing body FIFA, which classes North and South America separately.
“It’s not something that I planned. It’s all been completely by chance, but I’m proud of the record,” the keeper said.
However Pfannenstiel (which translates as “panhandle”) got very close to never leaving Germany, or even his native Bavaria at the start of his career.
In his youth, he was capped by his country at various age levels, but at 20 he found himself at a third division club.
He prompted interest from Bayern Munich, but never made it beyond their reserve team. So Pfannenstiel packed his bags and started his soccer odyssey. His first stop was Penang in Malaysia.
Then followed 23 transfers in 15 years, featuring well-known clubs, such as Wimbledon and Nottingham Forest in England, then the Orlando Pirates in South Africa, before stops in Malta, New Zealand and Brazil.
During his travels he has found himself penniless in Armenia, faced a brush with death in 2002, following a serious collision with an opponent in England’s seventh tier, and spent three and a half months behind bars after being suspected of corruption in Singapore.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier