“Michael Ballack is a leader. He is a real captain, the man in the house, accepted by everyone, involved in the crucial situations,” Franz Beckenbauer
“Ballack has an enormous share in the team’s great successes since the 2002 World Cup. He marked an era and, as captain, always put himself at the service of the team.”, Joachim Loew.
“Ballack is an important player, a great player. He has a lot of technical qualities and is one of the great players.”, Luiz Felipe Scolari
Trending
The quotes above speak for themselves about the glittering career of Michael Ballack, particularly as the German national captain. The former Bayern Munich and Chelsea star now finds himself out of national coach Joachim Loew’s future plans and one could only think of the inevitable and that is the player’s international retirement. Capped 98 times by the Die Mannschaft, Michael Ballack came to the prominence as a leader of a young and bustling German national team that found its famous fighting spirit not seen since the days of Lothar Matthaeus, Jurgen Klinsmann and Rudi Voeller. If the 2002 World Cup was the making of Michael Ballack as a player, the 2006 World Cup and the 2008 European Championships were the stages that gifted the world and the German fans a feisty leader that shaped the present German national football diaspora, which can be termed as youthful and fearless.
It is such a pity that an ankle injury rendered the Bayer Leverkusen legend unavailable for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa and it is such an irony that the current crop of German youth has kept the born leader out of the team to such a point that Joachim Loew had to take an honest decision for the sake of the German football fraternity. The time has come to get on with things and live life without the presence of a stalwart in a team that was centred around the leadership qualities of Michael Ballack.
Though many die hard Ballack fans believe that Loew should have been a bit more patient with the gradual recovery of his former captain, particularly after a strong end season showing with his club Bayer Leverkusen, the German boss had other ideas and he has made it clear publicly that Ballack himself agrees on the way forward. Loew was quoted as saying,
“In our talks, I had the impression that Michael definitely understands our point of view. So in the interest of everyone, an honest and clear decision is now appropriate.”
Few hours back the German Football Federation has confirmed that longtime German captain MichaelBallack’s international career is over and the Federation would like to utilize the August 10 friendly against Brazil as a potential farewell game for the 34-year old German midfielder. In the words of DFB General Secretary Wolfgang Niersbach, “We all want to have Michael Ballack in his 99th cap pay a dignified farewell to the national team on August 10 in Brazil to celebrate, and [for him] to lead our team as a captain on the field for the last time. These considerations have long been known to him. We hope that he accepts this offer.”
Although there have been no statements on the part of the player himself after the Federation’s announcement, it is very likely that Michael Ballack would end all the speculation surrounding his international career in the next few days by coming out with a media release.
As the curtains slowly come down on a legend’s fantastic career, let’s have a brief look back at the player’s international swansong that gave him and a lot of his countrymen so much satisfaction at times of great suffering for the national team. Despite playing well in the domestic arena with Chemnitz and Kaiserslautern, the East German born Ballack got his first national call up in April 1999 against Scotland under the guidance of Erich Ribbeck. German national football pride was getting severely dented at that time and the team was struggling to find replacements of the retired Klinsmann, Mathaeus, Voeller and Sammer. EURO 2000 turned out to be the lowest point in German football history as the defending champions were knocked out in the group stage and Ballack got just 63 minutes in the tournament to showcase his talents. Already a star with the Bayer Leverkusen side, Michael Ballack’s moment came in Asia in 2002 when Germany, under Rudi Voeller, defied all expectations to reach the final of the FIFA World Cup before losing 2-0 to a Ronaldo inspired Brazil. The tournament gave us a new midfield dynamo in the form of the then 25-year old Michael Ballack, already having a tremendous year at his club, who was instrumental in taking an average German team to the final with his goals separating the three-time World Cup champions from USA and hosts South Korea in the knock-out rounds. What was more impressive about the German midfielder was the fact that he made a last gasp tackle in the semi final to stop South Korea’s Lee Chun Soo from scoring a goal. Ballack knew he would miss the final if yellow carded which turned out to be the case but still went for the tackle and ironically held his nerve to score the winner. Germany might have come second best in the tournament but the seeds of a future German captain were sown on that epic semi-final night in Seoul.
EURO 2004 was a blip in Michael’s career as the Germans bid goodbye in the first round and the country now prepared to host the 2006 World Cup on home front under the managerial guidance of the famous Jurgen Klinsmann. Rudi Voeller inspired Ballack to be a great player both at Leverkusen and the national side but Klinsmann regarded his charismatic playmaker as a leader ready to follow in the footsteps of the great Franz Beckenbauer. After replacing Oliver Kahn as the national captain in 2004, the boy from Gorlitz in East Germany would go on to lead his beloved country for a further 55 games that saw the Die Mannschaft reach the 2006 World Cup semi-final and EURO 2008 final.
Farewell Michael
With 42 goals in 98 caps, the German No.13 will always be remembered as a lion hearted leader that gave Germany a new direction and a new hope of a team on the verge of being Champions of the World and Europe eclipsing the nostalgically successful eras of Gerd Mueller, Franz Beckenbauer, Lothar Matthaeus and Jurgen Klinsmann. Although Michael had been unlucky not to lift any silverware for his country, he certainly has set the stage for the future to go one step further in the international arena. The time has come for the likes of Phillip Lahm, Thomas Mueller, Mesut Ozil and Sami Khedira to get Germany to the next level that Ballack had dreamt of achieving.
