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Bastian Schweinsteiger helps settle Gerrard, Lampard and Scholes debate by naming who would have got into his Germany team

Home> Football> Football News

Published 14:25 6 Jun 2025 GMT+1

Bastian Schweinsteiger helps settle Gerrard, Lampard and Scholes debate by naming who would have got into his Germany team

Germany legend Bastian Schweinsteiger believes only one of the much-vaunted trio would make the cut.

Tom Marshall-Bailey

Tom Marshall-Bailey

It's a debate that continues to rumble on to this day and one which we're seemingly no closer to settling, with various former footballers in disagreement over who comes out on top between Steven Gerrard, Frank Lampard and Paul Scholes.

The England trio are some of the finest midfielders to ever grace the Premier League, Champions League and international stages and there are pros and cons for each when trying to decide the best of the three.

Schweinsteiger famously came up against Lampard in Bayern Munich's 2012 Champions League final defeat to Chelsea, when he missed a crucial penalty in the shootout, and also faced the Blues legend along with Gerrard during Germany's 4-1 rout of England in the 2010 World Cup.

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We put the question to Schweinsteiger on which England player from the golden generation he came up against would have been a good fit in the Germany team he was a part of. And in addition to Wayne Rooney, he chose one of the three midfielders to accompany him.


“For the German national team? I must say Wazza [Rooney] would be in there, Frank Lampard or Stevie G," he told SPORTbible ahead of the Champions League final, as part of Heineken's Cheers to the Superstitious Fans campaign.

“Tough one. I mean Scholesy, I played once against him so I played more games against Steven and Frank, especially with Frank I had a really good relationship.

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"I remember when Chelsea won here against us in 2012, he was desperate to win that trophy with John Terry and [Didier] Drogba for Chelsea and they did it.

"And the year after when we won in London at Wembley against Dortmund, one of the first messages I got was from Frank Lampard and he said congratulations so we had a great relationship.

"I will put Frank on top of them.”

Inter Milan fan Marco Simeone refused to watch the game as he feared jinxing his team.
Inter Milan fan Marco Simeone refused to watch the game as he feared jinxing his team.

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It backs up Schweinsteiger's previous claims that he finds it hard to name the best of the trio due to only playing against Scholes once during his career and even that was in non-competitive circumstances, having famously asked for the Manchester United icon's shirt at half-time during a game between Bayern Legends and their counterparts from Old Trafford just months after his country's 2014 World Cup win.

Clearly swapping shirts before the full-time whistle didn't feature on Schweinsteiger's self-confessed list of superstitions he stuck to during his playing days but his meticulous approach to preparing for matchdays pales in comparison to Inter Milan fan Marco Simeone.

Marco was sent to a purpose-built bar in a remote outpost of Germany to keep him as far as possible away from the action having become known among his friends for his extraordinary run of bad luck, claiming his team loses every time he’s in the stadium.

And Schweinsteiger confessed that players as much as fans are known to worry about jinxing matches, even if not quite to the lengths Marco went to in order to avoid his team.

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“Sometimes, you have some players yes," he revealed.

“Players are like ‘come on, you will jinx us again’ when they see someone at the stadium for the fifth time after losing four times in a row let’s say. If they saw that person, it happens.”

As part of its Cheers to the Superstitious Fans campaign, Heineken® sent a self-confessed 'Inter Milan jinx' to a remote bar in Germany. Even that wasn’t enough to change PSG’s fate-sealing five-goal triumph.

Featured Image Credit: Getty Images

Topics: Bastian Schweinsteiger, England, Frank Lampard, Germany, Paul Scholes, Steven Gerrard, Premier League, Champions League

Tom Marshall-Bailey
Tom Marshall-Bailey

Tom is the Editor of SPORTbible after joining from Reach PLC in August 2022. An Arsenal fan who has covered Huddersfield Town and Leeds United during his career to date in a footballing CV as eclectic as Steve Claridge's.

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@TomMarshall_B

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