Marcus Hahnemann


Hahnemann
Personal Information
Full Name:Marcus Stephen Hahnemann
Date of Birth:15-June-1972
Place of Birth:Seattle, WA, USA
Height:6 ft 3 in (1.91 m)
Club Information
Current Team:Reading
Number:1
Playing Position:Goalkeeper
Contract end:July 2009

Marcus Stephen Hahnemann (born 15 June 1972 in Seattle, Washington, United States) is a football goalkeeper. He currently plays for Reading in the Premier League, and is one of four American goalkeepers in the English top flight. His parents moved to the United States from Hamburg, Germany and he is of German descent.

Club career

Early years

Hahnemann grew up in the Seattle area and attended Kentridge High School where he was named the team's MVP his junior season. He transferred to Newport High School in Bellevue, Washington for his senior season. That year, he kept eleven clean sheets en route to being named the All-King County goalkeeper.

He played college soccer for the Seattle Pacific University Falcons. A Division II powerhouse, Hahnemann led SPU to the NCAA Division II National Championship in 1993. Over his four seasons at SPU, Hahnemann had a 64-9-5 record as a starter, with 46 career clean sheets. Seattle Sounders

Hahnemann's professional career started when he signed the Seattle Sounders of the A-League on May 1, 1994. In his first season with the Sounders, Hahnemann registered a .57 GAA in fourteen games to take the league's top goalkeeper honors. In 1995, he played twenty-nine games as the Sounders won the league championship. In 1996, the Sounders repeated as champions while Hahnemann kept eleven clean sheets and made 119 saves.

Colorado Rapids

He waited until 1997 to join Major League Soccer, signing with the Colorado Rapids. In his first season in MLS, The Rapids went all the way to the MLS Cup before losing to DC United.

Fulham

After two and a half seasons with the Colorado Rapids, he signed with English club Fulham, but did not see much playing time. In 2001, he was loaned out to Rochdale, and then to Reading.

Reading

Hahnemann then joined Reading permanently, and has been their first choice 'keeper ever since. Hahnemann has a great relationship with the Reading fans, handing his goalkeeper's shirt to a member of the crowd after every match. In the April 2006 issue of FourFourTwo magazine he revealed that the club had ordered him to stop doing this due to the expense, but he refused and began buying new shirts at his own expense from the club shop. In October 2006, Reading's shirt sponsor, Kyocera, agreed to pay for all of his shirts for the remainder of the 2006–07 season.

In April 2006, he was named as one of the Championship Team of the Year by the Professional Footballers' Association along with four other of his Reading teammates.
On 27 November 2006, Hahnemann signed a one year extension to his contract with Reading, keeping him at the Madejski Stadium until the summer of 2008.
Hahnemann made the most number of saves, 139, in the Premier League during 2007 International career

As of the end of the 2005 CONCACAF Gold Cup, Hahnemann has earned six caps for the United States national team, his first coming on 12 November 1994 against Honduras. He was selected for the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany, and was allocated shirt number 19, but was an unused substitute in all of the United States' matches behind Kasey Keller and Tim Howard.