Lehmann ready to state his World Cup claim

Jens Lehmann will get the chance to prove he can be Germany’s number one goalkeeper for the 2006 World Cup after being told he has a future at Arsenal.

Manager Arsene Wenger admitted today that he has been impressed by the way Lehmann has fought his back into the first-team reckoning since being axed in favour of Manuel Almunia last year.

He will come face to face on Tuesday night with Bayern Munich veteran Oliver Kahn, the man Lehmann is battling for the right to guard goal at the World Cup which the Germans host next year.

Germany goalkeeping coach Andy Kopke has already stated that the country’s first-choice goalkeeper for the 2006 World Cup finals will have to be playing regular club football by the start of next season.

Lehmann was dropped last November after paying the price for a string of defensive errors, but Wenger handed him a recall for the trip to Aston Villa at the beginning of the month.

Now he has paid tribute to the 34-year-old’s willingness to fight for his place.

Wenger revealed: “Jens will play against Bayern.

“Everyone will see it as a battle between Kahn and Lehmann but they are two professionals who want to do well. I don’t believe he needs an added motivation, an added pressure maybe.

“But he is 34 and he has to show he can deal with that. You do well in football when you are relaxed and motivated.

“That mixture is very difficult to find because when you don’t do well, you are not relaxed.

“When you are 20, you stand there shivering in a big game and if it doesn’t go well, you don’t know how to come back into the game. But when you are over 30, you get used to it.

“I liked his reaction when he was not in the team. I observed him well.

“Instead of doing a little bit less in training, he did a little bit more every day. He wanted to do more work. I didn’t push him to do more, he wanted to do it.

“He did the opposite of calling me names in the media when he wasn’t playing because he understood that it would not work. The only thing he could do was convince me that he could work hard and that is what he did.

“He is a guy who, when under pressure, responds very well. When he came back against Aston Villa, you could see that he was really focused.

“It could have gone really bad for him at this club but that is why he is where he is. It is down to quality and his attitude. When your back is against the wall, you show that you are ready to fight and that is what he did.”

Wenger goes to Munich knowing that he could have been their manager at an earlier stage of his career.

Before the Frenchman chose to go to Japan’s J-League in 1994, he met with Bayern officials but did not pursue the opportunity to become their manager.

Wenger revealed: “At the time I had one more year on my contract with Monaco. They said after six or seven years, that if a big club came in for me, I could go. But when it came to it, they didn’t want me to.”

Arsenal will be without Sol Campbell and Dennis Bergkamp in Munich, but Wenger still fancies his side’s chances.

Wenger, like his players, is totally focused on winning the Champions League but is adamant that he will not feel a failure if he never succeeds in bringing the coveted trophy to Highbury before he retires.

The Frenchman added: “I will not feel unfulfilled if I do not win the Champions League.

“I have enough experience to know that in this job you finish your career frustrated – no matter what you have achieved.

“Today, if you looked back on my 20 years, people would say I have been reasonably successful but I think only about the things I missed and didn’t win.

“I know I will never win enough but I would like to win the Champions League for the club.

“It has never been done at Arsenal and it is a big hole in their history. I have learned to live with the fact that you do not win everything you want to.”