Michael Ballack announced his retirement from professional football yesterday, at the age of 36. I hadn’t really kept track of his career post-Chelsea, mostly because he seemed plagued by chronic injuries and even more personal problems with his coaches, managers and teammates, both at the club and country level to actually be too relevant on the field. And then in the summer of 2012, his torrid 2 year return to Bayer Leverkusen came to an end and there were speculations of a move to the MLS or Down Under.
I think that the beginning of the end was the 2010 World Cup and what followed. It was not Ballack’s fault that he couldn’t lead his team in yet another international tournament; an ankle injury inflicted by Kevin-Prince Boateng in the semi-final of the FA Cup ensured that the German couldn’t play. What followed left a bitter taste in everyone’s mouths. An unceremonious handing over of the captain’s armband to Philipp Lahm, a very public falling out with Joachim Loew and the German Football Federation, and an international career that abruptly ended on 98 caps (and42 goals), in spite of the peace offering of a ‘farewell tour’ to bring up the magical three-digit number.
At that time, I remember thinking that maybe he should hang up his boots, on his own terms and not because of forced circumstances. And yet, that’s what it has finally come to. It is a shame that undoubtedly one of the best German midfielders and footballers of his age has to go out on such a whimpering, anti-climactic note, a situation, in many respects of his own stubborn making.