Lutz Pfannenstiel: The Incredible Tale of a Goalkeeping Nomad

By Sam Bales

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Substack – www.samonsport.substack.com

Over the years there have been many notorious incidents that have occurred both on and off the field involving high profile footballers. Even just a casual scratch of the surface of your memory would help you recall Gazza, Sheringham et al assuming the position in the ‘dentist’s chair’ in Hong Kong, or perhaps Mario Balotelli having a fireworks party inside his own house. Some of you may even remember Colombian goalkeeper Rene Higuita (he of scorpion kick fame) going to jail for a period of time for matters linked to his close personal ties with drug kingpin Pablo Escobar, or Bruce Grobbelaar pouring urine from a bottle onto the goalposts at Anfield to lift a curse.

Have you heard about the player who officially died three times on the pitch in one game though? What about the one who was imprisoned for 101 days in Singapore on allegations of match fixing? How about the one who kidnapped a penguin from a nature reserve in New Zealand because he fancied keeping it in his bathtub? Amazingly, these are all incidents concerning just one man, German goalkeeper Lutz Pfannenstiel, and they are by no means the only tales of interest from his incredible career.

Pfannenstiel may not be a household name but his journey in football has been nothing short of unbelievable. He is the only player to have plied his trade for teams in all six of FIFA’s confederations (they don’t yet play football on Antarctica) and across his career played for 25 different clubs in 13 different countries including Malaysia, Brazil, Armenia and South Africa. There have been many journeyman players in football but nobody quite like Lutz.

The beginning of Pfannenstiel’s career followed a fairly traditional path, playing youth football for hometown club SC Zwiesel and then FC Vilshofen before signing for semi-professional outfit 1. FC Bad Kotzting. He had been regarded as one of the best German goalkeepers of his age level and had represented his country at Under-17 level. As a 19-year-old, Pfannenstiel was offered amateur contracts by both VfL Bochum and Bayern Munich but decided that he wanted to actually get game time rather than bench warming at a big club. It was this mindset that set the goalkeeper on his path to a career spent moving around.

Pfannenstiel’s first move was to Malaysia to play for Penang FA. This had come about due to a chance meeting with a football agent following his trial at Bochum who had suggested that he may have a better chance at first team football by moving further afield. This was not straightforward though as Penang wasn’t the club that he had initially meant to play for in Malaysia. Various ‘deals’ fell through and Pfannenstiel had spent the best part of a week travelling around a foreign country following leads to clubs that may need his services. Just as he was about to give up, he got a phone call from his agent followed by another one from a high-ranking government official asking him to play for Penang against Hong Kong’s Happy Valley AA. The German had to travel quickly to even just get to the game on time and arrived just as the teams were being announced. Imagine his surprise when he was introduced as ‘Bayern Munich’s former goalkeeper!’ It seems that Pfannenstiel’s agent may have told a few white lies to get his man his chance.

This certainly paid off though as the German was swiftly offered a contract paying $6,000 a month and included accommodation in an exclusive beachside hotel and the use of jet skis whenever he wanted. Pfannenstiel quickly settled into the Malaysian lifestyle and began to enjoy the wild party nightlife of the capital Kuala Lumpur, even enjoying a stint DJing at a nightclub. However, despite his desire to play first-team football, Pfannenstiel still dreamed of making the big time and was soon scouted to join Wimbledon of the English Premier League. Once again, he was on the move.

Although he passed his initiation into the ‘Crazy Gang’, being stripped naked during a team run across Wimbledon Common and being forced to continue in his birthday suit past shocked children and pensioners, Pfannenstiel couldn’t break through in London, never playing for the first team. The same can be said of his time at Nottingham Forest who he moved to afterwards. More success was found during a loan spell at Orlando Pirates in South Africa and the next couple of years were spent moving around some more between Finland (very quiet and cold compared to the high life that he had enjoyed elsewhere) and Germany before Pfannenstiel finally settled at Geylang United in Singapore.

Geylang were a top team and expected to do well in the league but their form proved inconsistent. On a personal level though, Pfannenstiel was once again able to enjoy a lavish lifestyle, enjoying regular trips to high-end nightclubs and casinos. At one stage he also bought a couple of monkeys (which he named Glasnost and Perestroika) to keep in his apartment. All of this would soon come crashing down after what he thought was a chance meeting at a petrol station. The German was befriended by an Indian man named Sivakumar who kept bumping into him ‘by chance’. The Indian seemed to enjoy talking to Lutz about football, how his club were performing and whether he thought they would win, and the goalkeeper seemed to enjoy the perks of the friendship such as playing rounds at exclusive golf clubs.

What Pfannenstiel didn’t realise is that Sivakumar was using his information to place large bets on the outcome of matches. This took a turn for the worse when two star players of an upcoming opponent, Woodlands, were viciously attacked and ruled out of the game. Match fixing was rife in Singapore and it seemed like Lutz had just found himself embroiled right in the centre of it. Sivakumar was soon arrested but bargained with the police by providing the names of players that had given him information, including Pfannenstiel. The German was arrested, questioned, beaten, forced to take a lie detector test and held for 48 hours before being released, although without his passport.

The investigation dragged on, although Pfannenstiel was still expected to play, until, towards the end of the season, the goalkeeper was finally charged for conspiring in the match fixing situation after his friend had been tricked into signing a confession. Despite various attempts to clear his name, he was eventually found guilty and sentenced to five months in jail. Pfannenstiel’s excellent book, The Unstoppable Keeper, goes into great detail about the horrendous conditions that he was forced to endure whilst incarcerated including having to fight to stop others stealing his food, an attempted rape, and witnessing lashings. Suffice to say, the German was overjoyed when his sentence was reduced for good behaviour and he was released after 101 days, quickly claiming his passport back and returning to Germany.

No one could have blamed Pfannenstiel for never wanting to play football again after the strife that it had caused him, but it was all he knew. Again, he moved around a few times, which included having a couple of spells in New Zealand with Dunedin Technical. Rather than enjoying a somewhat quiet life after his prison ordeal though, Lutz again managed to continue to find himself in interesting situations including hunting down a burglar who had stolen his DVD player and some of his goalkeeper tops (making national headlines) and the aforementioned penguin incident. After being very taken by the creatures on a visit with his team, Pfannenstiel snuck back in the middle of the night dressed in black, entered the enclosure and popped one of the penguins into his rucksack. Eventually, after putting it in his bathtub with some ice and trying to appease it with some fish, Lutz was convinced by his club president to get rid of it so he took it down to the beach and set it free.

During the offseason in New Zealand, Pfannenstiel again headed for England, this time with Bradford Park Avenue of the Northern Premier League. He almost never returned Down Under! On Boxing Day 2001, the German lined up for his new team against Harrogate Town. With Avenue 2-0 up after 29 minutes, Pfannenstiel went in for a 50/50 challenge with Harrogate’s Clayton Donaldson. The striker reached the ball first but as he fell, hit the goalkeeper in the chest with his right knee. Immediately, the German knew something was wrong with his breathing. He stood up but then collapsed to the ground and blacked out. Unbelieveably, the referee let play go on and Harrogate pulled one back before they noticed the stricken goalkeeper. By the time the Bradford Park Avenue physio reached him, Pfannenstiel had no pulse and had stopped breathing. The physio resuscitated him but had to repeat the procedure two further times as the goalkeeper’s breathing kept stopping. Eventually an ambulance arrived and whisked him off. Ray Killick, the physio, had saved his life, three times. In true Pfannenstiel fashion, the doctors had advised him to have no strenuous activity for at least 10 days but he was back playing within a week.

Pfannenstiel continued to journey around for the rest of his playing days, spending time in Canada and Brazil to complete his set of confederations as well as a variety of other places. His career in football certainly didn’t finish there though. He was recruited as a goalkeeping coach by the national teams of both Cuba and Namibia. He then moved into a role as the head of International Relations and Scouting for TSG 1899 Hoffenheim and following this was a sporting director at Fortuna Dusseldorf. Alongside this, he has become a renowned television pundit, analyst and co-commentator for Bundesliga games on a variety of networks.

Most recently, Pfannenstiel was the Sporting Director for St. Louis City SC, an MLS expansion team who joined the league in 2023. The German was hired in 2020 and played a huge role in the building of the club at every level. Unbelieveably, the team won their conference at the first time of asking and much of the credit has been given to Pfannenstiel for encouraging a high-pressing style of play. Unfortunately for Lutz, good times never seem to last and he was recently fired from his position after being accused of insufficient vetting prior to the appointment of Olof Mellberg as head coach which led to expectations not being met.

Outside the regular workings of football, Pfannenstiel has used his standing to try and help good causes. In 2009 he formed Global United FC, a non-profit football club which is used to try and spread the word about climate change and protecting the environment. Over time the project has expanded and now also houses the Global United FC Africa Foundation, established in 2018. Pfannenstiel has also helped to organise and run a number of youth tournaments and charity events to try and help with issues in some of the countries that he has played in.

Reading the story of Lutz Pfannenstiel’s career is like reading an outlandish film script. The numerous incidents that the player has been involved in sound like they couldn’t possibly all happen, let alone to one person, and yet they are all true. No career in football is ever the same and it is probably safe to say that no one will ever have another career quite like that of ‘The Unstoppable Keeper’.