Oliver Kahn maintained his number one spot for the 2004 UEFA European Football Championship, but Germany were once again eliminated in the group stage. Oliver Kahn gave up his captaincy to Michael Ballack after the tournament. Germany's new manager Jürgen Klinsmann, who replaced Rudi Völler, adopted the strategy of rotating the number one spot between Kahn and his longtime competitor, Jens Lehmann of Arsenal, to stimulate competition between the two. On 7 April 2006, after two years of dispute for the position Klinsmann announced Lehmann was his first-choice goalkeeper for the 2006 World Cup. Kahn decided to stay on as a backup
James Kahn E.T.'s death. While on the set, Kahn gave a copy of his novel, "World Enough, and Time", to Spielberg – which resulted in Kahn getting the assignment to novelize the movie "Poltergeist", then in post-production. Kahn did several more novelizations after that – "Return of the Jedi", "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom", "The Goonies" and "Poltergeist II". During this period he also began to get television work, writing first for "St. Elsewhere", and later, "E/R" – a sitcom about an emergency department starring Elliott Gould and Mary MacDonald, in which Kahn created the character of a teen orderly