Steffen Freund joins Spurs Legends squad to face AC Milan Glorie

Steffen Freund will be part of our Spurs Legends squad to take on AC Milan Glorie at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this Sunday (23 March, 2pm).

Tickets are available for this fascinating match that will pit the likes of Ledley King, David Ginola, Aaron Lennon, Dimitar Berbatov, Jermain Defoe and Robbie Keane against a Milan side led by Italy maestro Andrea Pirlo and Cafu, Brazil’s most capped player and twice a World Cup winner.

A cult hero amongst fans, combative midfielder Steffen joined us from Borussia Dortmund in December, 1998 - within three months, he’d helped us to silverware, starting the final as we beat Leicester City thanks to Allan Nielsen’s late, late winner to lift the League Cup at Wembley in 1999.

Steffen joins Benoit Assou-Ekotto, Sebastien Bassong, Dimitar Berbatov, Stephen Carr, Pascal Chimbonda, Michael Dawson, Jermain Defoe, Mark Falco, David Ginola, Heurelho Gomes, Younes Kaboul, Robbie Keane, Ledley King, Aaron Lennon, Allan Nielsen, Sandro, Teddy Sheringham, Teemu Tainio and Michel Vorm in the squad for the charity match in aid of the Club’s Foundation.

Legacy Number #645, Steffen’s is a fascinating football story. Born in Brandenburg, East Germany, he was able to live his footballing dream by moving to the West after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Initially joining FC Schalke in 1991, Steffen switched to Borussia Dortmund in 1993, where he was part of a Bundesliga-winning squad in 1996, followed by a Champions League triumph in 1997. During that time, he also helped Germany win Euro 96 in England.

Steffen arrived at Spurs in December, 1998, and few players will have had such a ‘welcome’ to English football – he faced the attritional test of Wimbledon five times in his first nine games, including a League Cup semi-final victory over two legs.

A midfielder ‘enforcer’, Steffen recovered from a serious knee injury to make 131 appearances in all competitions before departing back to Germany and FC Kaiserslautern in 2003. He would later return as part of Andre Villas-Boas’ coaching team in 2012.

In recent years, he’s turned to media duties where he’s a popular pundit and co-commentator for the likes of RTL/Nitro, the DFL, Servus TV in Austria and Sportcast DFB-Pokal, on top of being a Technical Observer for UEFA.