LUTZ PFANNENSTIEL may have played for 25 different clubs and be the only player to have played professionally in all six FIFA continents, but the toughest league of all?
“The UniBond League,” he says as we climb an escalator at Waterloo train station, “And not just because it killed me!”
It’s no turn of phrase from the German goalkeeper, although it doesn’t quite tell the full story. In fact, it killed him more than once. Playing for Bradford Park Avenue, in his second spell, against Harrogate Town back on Boxing Day 2002, Pfannenstiel’s heart stopped beating on the pitch. Three times.
Physio Ray Killick saved his life but only after, Pfannenstiel since found out, screaming, ‘He’s f*****g dead, he’s f*****g dead!’
“That had nothing to do with Non-League or not Non-League,” Pfannenstiel says. “Tough league or not tough. It was an accident.
“Clayton Donaldson, faster than the fastest greyhound in the world, comes running at 100mph. I thought I’d get there, we got there together. His knee went into my sternum. Simply a freak injury.
“I’m dead on the field, even in Non-League that doesn’t happen every day! Seeing some grown up Yorkshiremen, who kick the s**t out of you every day, with tears in their eyes was something very special.
“My girlfriend was pregnant, seven months gone. They literally said ‘We want you to look at him one last time’.
“I remember it was 2-0 at the time. Robbie Painter and Simon Collins scored. Being a derby, Bradford v Harrogate, Boxing Day, lots of drunk people, faces green with mushy peas. I remember that and then waking up in the hospital.
“I was really p****d off with the nurses that I’d been substituted because I thought nothing had happened. It was two or three hours later I realised I’d been dead.”
It’s little wonder his brilliant autobiography is called The Incredible Adventures of The Unstoppable Keeper. It is a rip-roaring journey through his escapades across the globe.
From kidnapping a penguin to have as a pet in New Zealand, having a gun put against his head in South Africa and experiencing Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang, to the more serious 101 days wrongful imprisonment for match-fixing. An hour in his company flies by.
“I always say, ‘I’m not looking for trouble, but trouble is looking for me’,” he says. “The last years it got better. It’s not any more I get into the extreme stories.
“For me it was actually kind of normal I was getting a gun against my head, getting killed on the field. The prison story was hardcore. But wherever I went there were these, let’s call them ‘funny things’, going on.
“If I’d sat in Germany my whole career in the second division, perhaps I would have written a comic, just two pages.”
Pfannenstiel still looks out for the Avenue’s results every week. It is the club he will forever remember, especially his manager, the late Trevor Storton, for helping him re-start when he was finally released from Singapore’s Queenstown Prison.
He was thrown in the slammer for essentially playing too well, after conversations with a stranger where he said he thought his team would win.
“If you get locked up for something you have done, you’re paying your debt to society,” says the 41-year-old.
“If you’re getting locked up and the judge tells you that you’re getting locked up for playing too good, for winning games, and then you are waking up next to murderers and drug dealers, then you do ask yourself if there is justice or human thinking in this world.
“I had no bed, no toilet, no toilet paper. I got treated like an animal. I got punched. I had stitches in my face. I was close to getting raped. I fought to survive. For what I love; playing football.
“They charged me for three games where we won 2-0, 2-1 and drew 2-2 against a top team when I was man of the match. All for saying, ‘Yes we are a good team, I believe we are going to win’. Well, every week 100,000 footballers should go to prison.
“I’m a positive person. I tried to keep in my head it was a miscarriage of justice. There is no point sitting down and crying. It made me a better person.
“What is important is to help others, look after your family, help children, try to be a role model. Things I thought before were b*****ks became the truth of my life.”
Now, as well as being German side 1899 Hoffenheim’s Head of International Relations and Scouting, Pfannenstiel is a TV pundit and works hard on his charity Global United.
He meets some of the best players around the world, including Rivaldo and Zico, and organises charity games.
“We’re doing really good things, especially in Africa and South America,” says Pfannenstiel, who has also lived in an igloo to raise awareness about global warming.
“I don’t want to be a charity that raises donations. I want to get sponsors who come in to build a soup kitchen to feed 400 kids whose parents have HIV.
“Educate people about climate change, to have cleaner environment, for footballers to think about our children and grandchildren. We have a big possibility as a role model.
“In any stadium in the world, Champions League or Non-League, you’ll find old people and young people, white people and black people, poor people and rich people.
“All these guys are there to watch football. To these guys on the field, they listen to them. Football is a medium this world loves. All ages, all races, all religions, everybody. That was my idea and I think we’re getting there.”
