From Malaysia and South Africa to Namibia and Norway via Brazil and Armenia, the 41-year-old former goalkeeper is the only person to have played professionally in every Fifa confederation

There are journeymen and there are journeymen. And then there is Lutz Pfannenstiel, a 41-year-old former goalkeeper who puts every other multi-club footballer to shame. From Malaysia and South Africa to Namibia and Norway via Brazil and Armenia, Pfannenstiel is the only person to have played professionally in every Fifa confederation. It is a career that spanned 21 years, 25 clubs and six continents and included stealing a penguin in New Zealand to chasing down burglars and living in an igloo.

There were dark moments as well, though. In January 2001, Pfannenstiel was sentenced to five months in prison in Singapore after being accused of making a “corrupt verbal agreement” in relation to match-fixing. While playing for Geyland United, a club based in the south-east of the island, the German was found guilty of accepting an offer from a match-fixer to raise three separate sums of 7,000 Singaporean dollars to bet on his team’s games.

It is a charge that does not exist in most other legal systems in the world and one that he continues to deny to this day.

“It was a horrible time and I still have nightmares about it,” Pfannenstiel says. “When you wake up and you’re lying next to murderers and rapists without a toothbrush and without toilet paper, it makes you re-evaluate the life you had before. I soon realised that football wasn’t everything.”

Pfannenstiel found the country’s entire political system completely antithetical to his own beliefs and, despite being released from jail after 101 days due to a lack of evidence, the episode was not easily forgotten.

“It’s difficult to instantly move on from things like that, although it did make me appreciate what is really important in life. Footballers go to training in their nice cars and expensive clothes without a care in the world. In that respect, prison made me grow up fast.

“I can’t turn the clock back. I’m generally very positive; if I’d just thrown my toys out of the pram and started crying, I’d still be in tears now. You have to get back on your feet and I knew that the only way was up. It can’t get much worse than false imprisonment 6,000 miles from home.”

If that ordeal was not traumatic enough for Pfannenstiel and his family, two and a half years later he “died” while playing for Bradford Park Avenue in the Unibond League. A 50-50 clash with the Harrogate Town striker Clayton Donaldson caused the German’s lungs to collapse and nervous system to shut down, leading to him being pronounced clinically dead three times. Bradford Park Avenue’s physio Ray Killick managed to revive Pfannenstiel through mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but the goalkeeper remained in a coma for the next few hours.

“There was nothing malicious about Clayton’s challenge. He tried to jump over me but instead crashed straight into my sternum.

“I didn’t initially realise how serious it was. When I woke up in the hospital later that day, I was angry at the nurses because we were winning 2-0 and I wanted to keep a clean sheet and help us get three points.

“One week later, I was on the field playing again. The doctors advised against it and I was probably irresponsible but if I’d waited a couple of months I would’ve become too frightened to return. I had to get back out there as soon as possible.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pfannenstiel in 2000 when he played for Geylang United in Singapore. Photograph: ALEX TAN/AFP/Getty Images

Pfannenstiel’s career was not all doom and gloom, though, and his recently released autobiography includes its fair share of random tales. New Zealand appears to have been a particular place of fun, although the local penguins and burglars may be of a different opinion.

“That bloody penguin!” he says while laughing, referring to the animal that he kidnapped from a local penguin colony and kept in his bathtub. “It’s all anyone asks me about. When I was told that I could be deported because of it, he was soon sent back!”

On another occasion, Pfannenstiel returned home from training with Dunedin Technical to find his clothes, PlayStation and wallet missing. A tip-off at a nearby pawn shop led him to encounter the offender – who was wearing Pfannenstiel’s baseball cap, shorts and goalkeeper shirt – in the street. “I made him take everything off piece by piece. The people watching thought I was the bad guy!

“New Zealand was great for me. Dunedin gave me the chance to get back on track after prison. I’d gone through a six-month court case and spent 101 days locked up, which isn’t good for the body or the mind. New Zealand restored my passion for football.”

Pfannenstiel’s job has allowed him to travel extensively all over the world, discovering new cultures and making new friends as he moved between clubs, countries and continents every few months. Was it really all coincidental, and would he swap it for a more conventional career? “You might not believe me, but the whole thing was genuinely all by chance,” Pfannenstiel says. “I never expected to play in so many places.

“My first move abroad was in 1993, when I signed for Penang FA in Malaysia,” he explains, recalling a transfer that came about after the 20-year-old rejected an offer from Bayern Munich. “I don’t regret that at all. Bayern have a fantastic history and are obviously one of the biggest teams in the world, but I didn’t want to just be a backup to Oli [Oliver Kahn]. When the Malaysian opportunity came along, I decided to take the plunge, but the plan at that stage was to get some games under my belt and then move back to Germany. How wrong I was!

“Would I exchange it all? If you could guarantee me 400 games for a top German team, winning a few titles and cups and playing for the national team, then yes. But you have to be realistic. Would I really have been at the level of Kahn or Jens Lehmann? I’d probably have ended up as a No2 somewhere, playing a handful of games when the first choice got injured. Would I swap that for the career I had? Absolutely not.”

Having retired from playing in 2011, Pfannenstiel now divides his time between television punditry, running coaching instructor courses in Germany, heading Hoffenheim’s scouting and international relations and raising awareness of climate change through Global United, the nonprofit organisation he founded in 2010.

“I’ve done some goalkeeper coaching in Cuba, Norway and Namibia, and would like to get back into that one day. Right now I’m happy, though,” Pfannenstiel says reflectively. “We’re building something really special at Hoffenheim and it’s a pleasure to be a part of it.

“The Global United stuff is rewarding, too. I’ve always maintained that footballers should be role models. This sport is one of the few things in the world that is truly representative. Climate change activists won’t reach many people, but if you push the same message through the medium of football, you can connect the entire planet.”

The German, who once spent a week inside an igloo to promote the importance of the issue, has enlisted the help of many famous people within the game. “We’ve got the likes of Zico, Zinedine Zidane, Lothar Matthäus, Carlos Valderrama and Zé Roberto on board, plus many more. We’d have a top five-a-side team!”

With charity events in Switzerland, Namibia and even the Antarctica planned in the next couple of years, it is still too early to say definitively that Pfannenstiel’s peripatetic days are over. However, he is clearly relishing being back home in Germany for the time being. “I’ve got no ambition to change what I’m doing at the moment. I hardly ever say that sentence, which tells you how special 1899 Hoffenheim is. I’ve been here for four years with no intention to move yet – it’s unheard of!”