Didi is ready to deliver

Michael Ballack's suspension gives a team-mate the opportunity to fulfil his destiny in style. Emmet Malone reports

It's 23 years now since Dietmar Hamann started kicking footballs for his club side. Wacker Munich was a feeder club, always known for its ability to turn out stars of the future for the city's giants, Bayern. Even at five the young "Didi" had chosen his course. "Nobody who knew me ever would have thought I would do anything else," he recalls now. For some, destiny issues its call early.

Now, it seems his day has come.

While Michael Ballack's winning goal in Tuesday's semi-final against South Korea has guaranteed he will return home to Germany a hero regardless of the outcome of tomorrow's final, the Bayer Leverkusen midfielder's absence through suspension against the Brazilians will leave Hamann to shoulder the midfield burden in what will be easily he side's toughest challenge of the tournament.

Hamann, though, has already done enough at these finals to mark himself out as an equally influential figure in the German midfield, with the 28-year-old having again lived up to his reputation as a player who saves his best for the big occasions.

He came here, of course, with little left to prove to anybody regarding his capabilities. During nine seasons at Bayern he showed that he could compete at the highest level and since moving to England in 1998, primarily to improve his football, he has come to thrive there.

On leaving Munich, the club he had joined as a 16-year-old and where he won two Bundesliga titles as well as German and UEFA cups, he said that he was acting upon the advice of Giovanni Trappatoni, under whom he had become a key figure in the club's midfield.

But the switch took time to pay off due in part to the turmoil that engulfed Newcastle United during Ruud Gullit's time in charge. The Tyneside club had paid €8.8 million for the then 24-year-old, which always looked a tidy piece of business and under the Dutch coach Hamann, despite some injury problems, performed well in the more advanced midfield role that he now looks set to take on again in Ballack's absence.

Five goals in 30 appearances seemed a respectable return on his first season at St James' Park but the player was disappointed by the team's performance and the relationship between the two men became strained. The difficulties came to a head at half-time during the Cup final, a game in which Newcastle were comfortably beaten by Manchester United.

The midfielder limped into the dressing-room complaining of a dead leg and asked to be replaced. When Gullit questioned his commitment to the cause, a bitter row ensued. Within weeks there was talk of a move to Arsenal, which Hamann openly encouraged, but it was Gerard Houllier, in the market for a man to replace the departing Paul Ince, who eventually came to the rescue.

The player's first season at Anfield was subdued enough and there was some criticism that he really only performed against his new club's biggest rivals. The following year, though, he was central to the club's overdue revival, becoming a consistently strong performer in a midfield in which Steven Gerrard was also beginning to fulfil his potential.

"A lot of what he does on the pitch goes unnoticed," said Jamie Redknapp, another of his Liverpool team-mates at the time. "But his strengths are his passing and his coolness on the ball. He rarely ever gives the ball away, he's an exceptional player."

The club won three cups and though it could not sustain its league challenge during the season just ended, Hamann again did well over the course of the campaign despite being hampered somewhat by the team's defensive approach and reliance on the long ball which often obliges him to occupy a very deep-lying position. The style presents him with limited opportunities to demonstrate the extent of his ability as a passer of the ball going forward and it falls short on perhaps the most important count of the "fast, direct and attacking" football he had said he was going to England to be a part of. Nevertheless, he has adapted well and was one of the team's strongest performers in this season's Champions League.

The situation has not been all that different at international level where he was one of the few Germans to emerge with any credit from the European Championships two years ago when he did well against Portugal and Romania.

Four years after his debut, though, it was in last year's play-off games against Ukraine that Hamann won over those back at home who saw him as a poor replacement for the more attacking Thomas Hassler in the centre of the team's midfield.

With the 5-1 hammering by England still hanging over the team during its preparations and Andrei Shevchenko possessing the potential to open up the defence again, the Liverpool player was detailed along with Carsten Ramelow to deal with the threat posed by the striker. Hamann, in particular, was outstanding and the Germans ended up progressing easily to these finals.

In the five games he has played since arriving here his work rate has been astonishing and after the 8-0 defeat of Saudi Arabia, Rudi Völler joked that the midfielder may have set "a new world record out there for the amount of possession by a single player in a game of football".

The midfielder has been positive about Voller's role, too, remarking this week that "for once we have had a coaching staff that the entire team could get behind. I knew from the moment we started that this tournament would be different for us to '98 and 2000. At both of those tournaments there were problems from the start but this time you could feel that the whole atmosphere within the squad was different."

During the past few weeks the Ireland game was the setting for his most subdued performance by some way while he missed the second round defeat of Paraguay due to the two yellow cards he had picked up in the group stages.

As Ballack made the headlines against South Korea in Seoul earlier this week, though, Hamann stole the show, demonstrating that he was probably the only German player on the pitch capable of matching the physical effort put in by the host nation's players over the course of the 90 minutes.

Against the Brazilians he will inherit much of Ballack's responsibility for generating an attacking threat from central midfield and with his excellent passing game, good movement off the ball and fierce long-range shot, he is well suited to the task.

It will be a crucial area of the game for the Germans with Völler having seen enough of tomorrow's opponents to know that they can be very vulnerable at the back if adequately tested.

In the biggest game of his life the changed role will be an enormous challenge for the Liverpool man, but Didi has been preparing almost all of his life for this and tomorrow may just be his day.

If Germany are really to defy the odds again and lift their fourth world title, then it needs to be.