What happened to Jens Lehmann?
Jens Lehmann was a goalkeeping legend for Arsenal. He went a whole Champions league campaign without conceding a goal in ten consecutive games. He was a member of Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’, playing every match of their unbeaten title-winning season in 2003-04. He was the backbone of the Arsenal team for so many seasons and above all, he was a goalkeeper with a lot of charisma. The German national team is known for producing world class goalkeepers, and Lehmann surely qualifies as a world class keeper, not just because he is German, but because of what he achieved.
Lehmann played for Arsenal between 2003 and 2008; and during this period, he was Arsenal’s first choice for a most of it. When he retired from football, he went to into coaching and came back to Arsenal as an assistant coach under Wenger in his last season. Ahead of the 2017–18 season, it was confirmed that Lehmann would return to Arsenal once again as assistant coach but on 19 June 2018, Arsenal confirmed that Lehmann had left the club as part of new head coach Unai Emery’s coaching staff changes. Ever since he left Arsenal, nothing has been heard about our legend.
In all honesty, Lehmann moved on after being relieved of his position by Emery and was made assistant coach of FC Augsburg alongside Manuel Baum, where he is still. According to stories I hear from my friend in Germany, Lehmann’s club is doing well and part of the praise should go to him.
“If there is one thing I can say about the former Arsenal goalie, it is the fact that he has been able to organize Augsburg’s defence and teams find it difficult scoring against his team, especially away! He is good enough to organize a team’s defence and give the goalkeeper the confidence needed to do well.” My friend told me over the phone when we spoke last week.
Well, I don’t really know if my friends’ assessment of the German great is accurate or not, but I think he is not totally wrong in Lehmann’s assessment and in his ability to organize defenses; he was good at doing this while he kept for Arsenal and this helped him a lot in taking charge of his team’s defence. Currently, Arsenal is battling with a defensive crisis and we need all the help we can get. What if we try getting Lehmann back to help Arteta and Arsenal in organizing their defense, the way he does at Augsburg? We are Arsenal and we are proud.
Sylvester Kwentua