Ballack Considered/Considering Retirement

By: chris | January 31st, 2008

Back in the summer of ‘06, when Michael Ballack left home to sign for big poundage in London, he said “I hope this will be my last club. I’d like to finish my career here.”, which I suppose led everyone to believe he’d be spending many, many glorious years in Chelski blue. It appears he’s still thinking along the same lines, only the time frame may be much shorter. The ankle injury, which turned out to be much more extensive than many thought (besides the Chelsea doctors who advised against putting him on the CL list, I guess), apparently was so frustrating he considered a premature sunset. And now, he’s using the dreaded “retirement” word again.

It’s probably not a big deal, but considering the fact that he has thought about it recently and he mentioned it again - meaning he probably gave it serious consideration - it is at least newsworthy. The two quotes:

“I always believed in the fact that I would come back,” Ballack told German weekly newspaper Die Zeit. “But I was really worried about the injury, I had thousands of questions, but just did not have the answers.

“It got on my friends and families nerves: I couldn’t get my injury out of my head 24 hours a day. Sometimes, I thought to myself, ‘man, now you are 31, you had 14 good years as a professional. Perhaps that is it now’.”

and this, which has yet to be confirmed, but seems plausible with the earlier info:

“What comes when my contract expires, we’ll just have to see,” British media have quoted him as saying. “Whether I stay another year, go somewhere else or hang up my boots — you never know in soccer.”

Coming from an article - via the highly informative Deutsche Welle - which then proceeds to assess his legacy.

This may be way off base, but I’ve got to wonder whether the frustration of the injuries combined with watching former international and FC Bayern teammate Sebastian Deisler retire prematurely due to injuries played any part in this thinking. A lengthy injury is difficult enough as it is. Watching someone who is at least a colleague (they may be friends, I don’t know - we don’t run in the same circles), go through many situations like this may have been enough for him to think he doesn’t want to do the same. So if another injury similar to the last pops up, who knows. Could be completely off base though.

(Or maybe he just wants more time off to buy his lady handbags.)