Kahn well placed to achieve the impassable

Oh ye of little faith. If only Germany's playmaker and one genuinely creative player, Michael Ballack, had put more trust in his goalkeeper and captain Oliver Kahn, he could have been preparing to play in the World Cup final tomorrow.

As South Korea's Lee Chun-Soo ran at the German defence 20 minutes from the end of Tuesday's semi-final in Seoul, with Ahn Jung-Hwan free on his right, Ballack decided to make the lunging challenge from behind that would bring him a second yellow card in three games and consequently a ban from the match of his dreams. "A tactical foul that was absolutely necessary," said Germany's coach, Rudi Völler, in admiration at his midfielder's self-sacrifice. But was it?

Lee Chun-Soo was already aware of convincing evidence that it is harder to kick a football past Kahn than any other man on the planet. On the only previous occasion that his team had come close enough to see the white of the goalkeeper's gloves, he had disbelievingly watched his swerving shot being pushed aside with one outstretched hand. It was a defining moment, destined to be replayed over and over again this week on Korean television, in which the home side realised that they were up against a goalkeeper proving himself even more capable than Italy's Gianluigi Buffon and Spain's Iker Casillas, both of whom they had eventually found a way past in the previous two rounds.

From the position he was in just before Ballack's tackle, Lee Chun-Soo would not have been fancied to score; even if he had noticed the unpredictable Ahn Jung-Hwan to his right and played him in, who knows whether the finish would have been good enough to beat Kahn? Five other teams have tried in this World Cup and in the course of more than nine hours of football, only Ireland's Robbie Keane has succeeded. Even then, in that dramatic last minute of play at Ibaraki, the Bayern Munich man, left naked by his defence, almost denied the Irish the goal and the draw they deserved.

Earlier in that game, he confounded Damien Duff with one of the saves of the tournament after Kevin Kilbane headed down to him 10 yards out, and later, after defying Cameroon and Paraguay, he seemed to be playing the United States on his own, before another Ballack goal. Not that he would rebuke his team-mate for a lack of faith against the Koreans, choosing instead to describe the incident as "a good example of how our team works. He risked receiving a yellow card that would put him out of the final, for the sake of the team."

It was by no means always thus in the German camp, but since taking on the captain's armband, Kahn seems to have helped unite the squad, as well as providing evidence to disprove the theory that standing between the posts is no place from which to lead a team. "It's the most united German squad I've played in," said Liverpool's Dietmar Hamann, who fell out spectacularly with a previous captain, Lothar Matthäus, at Euro 2000. Those defenders and midfielders who have had their ears singed after allowing opponents too close to goal do not need convincing of their captain's ability to communicate his thoughts.

At 33 (he celebrated his birthday by keeping a clean sheet against Paraguay), Kahn should now be at his peak. It is a surprise to realise that this is the first World Cup in which he has played any part, Bodo Illgner having worn the gloves in 1994 and Andreas Kopke four years later. Although Kahn's debut came in 1995 against Switzerland, he was the understudy to Kopke at Euro 96 and France 98 before establishing himself on the back of greater exposure for Bayern in domestic and European football.

He joined the Munich club in 1995 from his hometown side, Karlsruhe, and soon won a Uefa Cup-winner's medal, followed by four Bundesliga titles and two European Cup finals that brought emotional extremes. Beaten by Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer in the final extraordinary 60 seconds of the 1999 final, he effectively won the trophy for Bayern two years later with no fewer than three saves in the penalty shoot-out against Valencia.

More specific individual honours include a double as German Footballer of the Year (2000 and 2001); and if managing to avoid one of the howlers that have plagued other leading keepers over the past month, he will be the obvious choice as gloveman of the World Cup. Whether he can emulate Germany's goalkeeping coach, Sepp Maier, in earning a winner's medal to go with that accolade is one of the issues to be resolved in the International Stadium. Either way, Maier believes: "He is the best player of the tournament."

It has not been a bad one for a player some critics unwisely believed to be past it after conceding five goals to England on that freakish evening in Munich last September. None of them could be attributed to him, and it was a cheap shot (unlike England's five) for a British tabloid to burn his gloves on its front page the following Monday morning. As one German asked this week in recalling that tawdry episode: "Where is King Kahn now? And where is England?"

Oliver Kahn Fact File

Born: 15 June 1969, Karslruhe

Club: Bayern Munich (signed July 1994)

Previous club: Karlsruhe

International debut: v Switzerland, 23 June 1995

Caps: 52

Trophies: European Cup 2001; Uefa Cup 1996; Bundesliga 1997, 99, 00, 01; German Cup 1998, 2000

Honours: World goalkeeper of the year 2001; German Footballer of the Year 2000, 2001.

World Cup 2002: Appearances: 6; Min: 540; Goals conceded: 1; Yellow cards: 1.