The game on 25 May 2013 was pretty much twenty minutes old when I finally started playing football. Until then I had run around the pitch at best, but football wasn't what I was playing.

My head was full of thoughts: “just don't take any risks, just don't make a mistake, just don't lose another decisive game.”

Suddenly, now of all times, I knew what other players meant when they said after a bad game: "My head wasn't free". Or: "I have a backpack full of thoughts" or better still: "I dragged a backpack around the pitch." For the first time in my career I felt the kind of pressure that can make not only the head but also the legs heavy.

If Manuel Neuer hadn't made two or three great saves, we would have been trailing against the highly-motivated Dortmund after only twenty minutes, and rightly so! I wasn't there yet, Basti Schweinsteiger wasn't there yet. Only Javi Martinez, who played his first season for FC Bayern, really stood up on the pitch and stabilized our team with his outstanding physique and light-heartedness.

I had already won all the domestic titles with FC Bayern. In the past three Champions League seasons we had made two final appearances. In 2010, against Inter Milan, we didn't really have a chance and the defeat was fine (to be honest, we had used up a lot of luck to get to the final in the first place).

But two years later, in the "Finale dahoam" against Chelsea, it was the other way around. Not only had we been the better team throughout the game, but we had also been the better team in the final. We missed the best chances, scored the equalizer in injury time, missed a penalty in extra time and somehow slipped into the lottery that is the penalty shootout. Chelsea took advantage of the moment and took the trophy that - all but a few Chelsea fans agreed on - we deserved.

I had become the captain of the team and was responsible for that. Although we played football really well under our coach Jupp Heynckes, there were voices here and there doubting that the "Lahm-Schweinsteiger generation" would ever manage to win a big international title.

Normally I don't give a damn about such gossip. But I knew one thing myself: International titles are the hardest currency in football. Even if you're in a Champions League final ten times, play well and only lose because your opponent's luck is higher than heaven, there's still something left: the fact that you've lost. So if we wanted to win a big title, now was the time.

When we qualified for the final in Wembley in the 2012/2013 Champions League season by beating Arsenal (round of sixteen), Juventus Turin (quarter-finals) and FC Barcelona (a total of 7-0 over the two semi-finals), one thing was clear: This time we simply could not lose. The fact that our opponent was Borussia Dortmund did not make things any easier. Jürgen Klopp's squad not only knew us well, they were also motivated to the tips of their toes to spoil our flawless season. We had won the Bundesliga with a record lead over the Dortmund team, which had been German champions in the two previous seasons. We also reached the final of the DFB Cup against Stuttgart.

After the defeat in the "Finale dahoam", FC Bayern had cleverly strengthened its position. Javi Martinez was the right player to stabilise the team in the centre. Dante had the season of his life in central defence alongside Jerome Boateng. With Robben, Ribery and Mandzukic, we had a line of highly motivated characters whose egoistic determination strengthened the young, powerful team.

As strange as it may sound, the defeat against Chelsea had created a noticeable dynamic. We were self-confident and optimistic. A functioning team with a clear idea of the game had been upgraded once again. In addition, we were more-or-less spared injuries this season - in the final we only had to do without Toni Kroos.

My job as captain that evening at Wembley was to keep the momentum that had taken us to the Champions League Final for the second time in a row, and the third time in four years, alive.

Everything was done. All we had to do was reward ourselves and win against a team we had left 25 points behind in the Bundesliga.

On the other hand, it was exactly this starting position that made things so difficult. We were expected to win anyway after last season's history - but a defeat against a German team would have been much worse than losing a final against Real Madrid, Barcelona or Manchester United. I knew they would kill Basti and me if we didn't win against Dortmund. We had introduced a new leadership style at FC Bayern, which some looked at with suspicion - they had long since asked behind closed doors whether the “Lahm-Schweinsteiger generation” could win at all, and we simply had to give the answer on the pitch.

Fortunately, in a functioning team, each player stands up for each other, and the performance of individual players makes it possible for others to stand up to them. Manuel and Javi took charge at the beginning of the game, and little by little I regained my own familiar safety, focused fully on the game, my opponents and our own dominant attacking game.

Great games always succeed only through the strengthening of the collective. Basti Schweinsteiger took over the midfield, Robben, Ribery and Thomas Müller kept the Dortmund defence occupied. We took over the command and created ourselves a whole series of chances. After a successful passage of play between Robben and Ribery, Mandzukic scored to make it 1-0, very much in line with the course of the game. I could feel the massive energy that our game now emanated.

But a great victory requires not only skill, but also luck. We didn't have that at first. After a counter-attack and an unfortunate defensive reaction by Dante, we conceded a penalty and an equalizer by Ilkay Gündogan.

But this goal didn't shock us, not anymore. Our attacks started rolling. We created numerous chances. If Roman Weidenfeller hadn't held up, the game would have been decided much earlier. The minutes passed and extra time was just around the corner. But we didn't want to go into extra time. We wanted to force the decision now, in regular time, and it's a point of fate that our winning goal came from an almost unsuccessful hack pass by Franck Ribery and a lucky interception by Arjen Robben, before Arjen, who had already had several big chances, scored the decisive goal to make it 2-1 with a roaring, unsightly goal a minute before the end.

FC Bayern this season showed what an international top team must look like: An axis of local players, who embody the club one hundred percent, cleverly supplemented by international professionals, at the head of whom stood a handful of exceptional talents, who made the difference at the right moment. Every top team needs this balance, this diversity.

A week later we won the DFB Cup in the final in Berlin by beating Stuttgart 3:2. So FC Bayern’s historic treble was complete. The “Lahm-Schweinsteiger generation” had won their first international title.

It had always been my dream to win the Champions League with my home club - that's why I had turned down FC Barcelona's enticing offer. Now it was our time. The title inspired not only us in Munich, but a whole generation of German footballers.

The following year, the World Cup was due to take place in Brazil. Only the world champion title was missing. My feeling before the final in Rio, was completely different to that feeling in Wembley, back in May…