Lahm spent almost his whole football life in his hometown Munich, defending the local club’s colors. Even a brief look at today scores football is enough to realize the dominance of Bayern Munich in the German championship. But the basis for this success was laid in the early 2010s and the German defender stood at its roots.
Philipp’s professional career began with a three-year loan at Stuttgart. The Swabs’ famous coach Felix Magath had no clear plan for the young talent, constantly entrusting him with different tasks. Fortunately, Lahm quickly found a position for which he is known today and where he managed to reach the maximum number of scores while performing on the football field. We are talking about the left flank of the defensive line. At the end of 2003-2004 season, he became the second most valuable player in the team (according to a journalistic survey), following the key scorer only.
The Bavarian period and the German national team
Because of the broken leg and a subsequent serious injury to the cruciate muscles in 2005, Lahm couldn’t stay on loan at Stuttgart and had to return to Bayern, whose youth school he used to attend. Besides, having weighed the current Bundesliga result of the young defender, the native club’s management decided to give him a chance to become useful. As a result, in 2006 due to a number of staff changes, Philipp appeared on the field as an uncontested player of the main squad, which made it possible for him to become one of the team leaders quickly.
As the years went by, the head coaches changed, the team performed more and more confidently in Bundesliga, showing decent result in comparison with its closest competitors, but something remained unchanged – Philipp Lahm in the starting squad. For his phenomenal endurance, he even got the nickname – a “Little Giant”. Together with him, Bayern won the following and a number of other titles:
- German Champion – 8 times, including five in a row between 2013 and 2017.
- German Cup Winner – 6 times.
- German Super Cup – 3 times.
- Winner of the Champions League 2012-2013.
Lahm could boast of similar successes on the international level, consistently taking prizes with the German national team at the Euro and World Championships, the season 2014 even ended with a convincing victory. It should be mentioned that in 2006, the German was heavily criticized for his performance in the final game of the World Cup. It was claimed that he was to blame for the team’s loss. However, critics forget that without him, the German machine couldn’t have reached so far in this prestigious international tournament.