19 - INTER XMAS ADVENT CALENDAR: ANDREAS BREHME

«I’d use my right or my left, it didn’t matter to me. I only had one secret: work hard and train a lot.” 

When talking about him, Lothar Matthäus loved to repeat: “He’s the best player I’ve ever played with.” Walter Zenga rememberers what he did in training. “He’d take ten penalties at me. Five with the right and five with the left. Relentless.” Andy Brehme joined from Bayern Munich and won it all. In Germany, he played as a midfielder, he knew how to use both feet and Giovanni Trapattoni moved him wider to play at left-back in what would turn out to be a revolutionary change, both for Brehme and Inter’s fortunes. 

He could use his right or his left and it made no difference. In the 1990 World Cup final at the Olimpico in Rome, he decided to take the penalty with his right, beating Goycochea to secure the trophy for Germany. Reliable, an option from set pieces but also a goalscorer. When Inter won the Scudetto in the 1988/89 season, he scored three times and got six goals the following season. 

Brehme made an important mark in the history of the Nerazzurri and that wasn’t all as he finished third in the table for the 1990 Ballon d’Or. A complete player with Inter in the blood. He was adored by the fans and he always professed his love for the Nerazzurri.