Did Toni Schumacher perform a trumpet solo on the West Germany 1986 World Cup single? I have vague childhood memories of seeing it on Football Focus just before the tournament started. Did it really happen or did I simply dream it / make it up?

No, I definitely remember that as well.

Thanks AB. I have no idea why, but I clearly remember the tune of the German song. I think it was called something along the lines of "Mexico Me Amore" (but probably not that, obviously).

Here it is on YouTube. A real treat for fans of utterly rotten deutsche Schlager.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find a clip with Schumacher on the horn.

I saw the video for that recently on a repeat of one of those 'World Cup Nightmares' compilation shows and he plays (or at least mimes playing)a solo at the end. Maybe it was to get people thinking: "Hey, anyone who can play the trumpet so beautifully can't be all bad". Another player is strumming a guitar but I couldn't identify him. Pretty sure Franz Beckenbaur is there too but is trying to keep out of shot. I think the title is as you remember.

Found it!

I think the player with the guitar is Michael Frontzeck, and Beckenbauer does look decidedly embarrassed, which is strange, given his own proto-Keeganesque singing career.

Alderman Barnes, I think I love you.

Michael Frontzeck who ended up at city?

Blimey.

I aim to please.

The trouble is, I'm desperate to find a clip of the Kaiser doing "Gute Freunde kann niemand trennen" now.

EIM, at least I think it's him. It's difficult to tell because he's got hair in that clip.

Incidentally, he's now in charge of Arminia Bielefeld, who avoided relegation from the Bundesliga this afternoon.

Oh well, I can't find a clip of his nibs singing it, but here's Franz Beckenbauer's hit for anyone that wants to hear it.

At the risk of taking over this thread completely, here's a better effort from the 1974 squad.

The man conducting the players is Jack White (not that one), a former professional footballer who produced hundreds of hits for people like Engelbert Humperdinck and Tony Christie, and spent a while as chairman and sugar-daddy of of Tennis Borussia Berlin during their doomed and disastrous attempt to reach the Bundesliga a few years back.

Did someone say 'Tennis Borussia Berlin'? That's enough to make me like Jack White.

And this, surely, is the best thread so far since the Great OTF Migration took place.

Believe me, if you listened to enough of Jack White's music you most definitely wouldn't like him. He's a rather dodgy businessman as well, apparently, but he can do a good oom-pa-pa Cup Final song if the need arises.

His association with TeBe ended badly, and they've got progressively worse ever since. Next season they look likely to end up in the fifth tier, the worst position in the club's history.

Anyway, here's one of the popular Nutella adverts, where Arne Friedrich has revealed himself to be a better actor than he is a defender.

If anybody is really desperate to add West Germany's 1974 World Cup song to their MP3 collection, it can be downloaded HERE

(Incredibly, something like 250 have felt the need to own it. But then, so did I a some point.)

Edit: I just looked up what I blogged about it. "The title eschews cliché in favour of positing a theory designed to solve the ultimate philosophical quanandrum which has exercised the greatest minds throughout history. "Football is our life". The concise simplicity of this statement must have shamed Liverpool's legendary Bill Shankly — the man who made famous the borrowed phrase about football bei