Lothar Matthaus is in hot water again. The German midfielder has blamed former foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher for getting Germany dumped out of the World Cup by Croatia in the quarter-finals.

Matthaus, whose legendary rows with coaches and team-mates have dogged his career, tells the latest edition of Stern magazine that had Genscher not pushed the European Union to recognise Croatia in 1992, the side would never have qualified for France 98.

Denscher defended himself stoutly in the columns of the daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, saying: "You cannot link the two events. If Yugoslavia still existed in the same form as in the past, the Croatian players would be part of that team and Germany could have been eliminated at an even earlier stage of the tournament."