Kahn: ‘Extra-marital affair destructive’

Berlin: Oliver Kahn was long hailed as a national hero for leading Germany to the World Cup finals last year but he has been mauled by the country’s media this week for betraying his pregnant wife with a barmaid.

Kahn, voted best player of the World Cup, admitted the bombshell extra-marital affair days before his wife was due to give birth to their second child, a revelation which has caused a storm of condemnation.

“I know myself how destructive and stupid this is,” Kahn said in an interview on Wednesday with Bunte magazine, which like many German publications put his fall from the pedestal on its cover, under the title “Double life with the disco girl”.

Kahn’s personal life has been a page-one story in the country’s best-selling Bild daily for five straight days and details about the romance with the 21-year-old Munich nightclub waitress have featured on evening news programmes all week.

It has also been the favourite topic of discussions at countless office water coolers, on talk radio stations and commuter trains, in pubs and in soccer circles around the nation.

“Simone Kahn shouldn’t blame herself for this irresponsible man but grab the children, grab the money and throw him out the door,” Silvia Matthaeus, ex-wife of former Bayern Munich captain Lothar Matthaeus, said.