Not to drag this out even longer, but,
Two articles from Zeit.de on the Ballack issue. I translated them on a whim just for practice, and thought someone here might appreciate them. The first is openly cynical, and the second is either much more sympathetic or does the irony with a very light touch, I cannot quite tell. Corrections are welcome.
Ballack and Löw - One of the Two is Lying
A game of betrayal, intrigue, overweening ambition, destroyed dreams, and the power of the media: the case of Ballack is material for the great footballing novel - BY THOMAS KLUPP
No one knows, in the Causa Ballack, who said, texted, or in some other way communicated what to whom at which time - no one other than the involved parties themselves. But since at least one of them is lying and no one knows who, we - the frenzied, confused masses - are no wiser than before. Only the joint efforts of the BND (Federal News Service) and the CIA could bring light in the darkness, by digging through all the headlines and soundbites from Michael Ballack, Jogi Löw, Oliver Bierhoff and Wolfgang Niebsbach since last summer, as well as all the statements of their respective spokesmen, agents, and backers.
On this basis, we suggest, the Captaincy Protocols might at last give rise to the first great footballing novel in the German language - a curious puzzle of betrayal and intrigue, of overweening ambitions and destroyed dreams and the power of the media in our time. And these would only be the obvious themes of the story. To do justice to the complexity of the event, one would have to dig deeper. One would have to probe the labyrinthine structures of the DFB and imagine oneself into the mental universes of its telegenic clique of leaders. One would have to tentatively imagine, say, what walks around in the head of the manager of the national team, Oliver Bierhoff, whenever he watches a game (one million euros for this feeling!). One would also have to remember Jürgen Klinsmann, his visions of aawakening and renewal and his unconditional belief in the collective as the star, which was the beginning of the end of Ballack's national team career. And of course, the story would also need the dramatic moment, perhaps reproduced in a sort of linguistic super-slow-motion, in which one foot brutally smashed into another - at least about one chapter long.
However, one would have to begin more simply. One would have to concentrate first of all on a young man, who at the beginning of the last decade played football a little better than all the other men in the land. Nowhere near as good as the greatest in the field, yet good enough that he was proclaimed the standard-bearer of German football. A standard-bearer for 80 million, almost overnight. What - and this would be the question facing the presently eruptive sensibility of Ballack - what has that made this man? Has the seemingly endless self-confidence of the previous decade so blinded him that he holds himself indispensable? Has he, during his time alone in England, forgotten that the clocks also run in this country, and that the new generation grows stronger day by day? Or has he really succumbed to the greatest blindness in the world of sport, and assumed that past performances are worth more than a whit in the present?
And yet the author would also have to make up his mind about something that cannot be glossed over: the fact that he is writing about someone who, in the admittedly meagre years of German football, was Germany's best player. In the spirit of poetic justice, the man ought to have earned himself a happy ending - not just in the national team, but maybe even with Bayer Leverkusen. Michael Ballack, as he holds aloft the Champions League trophy in the 2011/2012 season - that would be a worthy closing scene to this novel, although perhaps one which skirts the borders of fantasy.
Michael Ballack - Victim of a Conspiracy
Michael Ballack is the most important German player of the last decade. But Fate has been repeatedly cruel to him. - BY OLIVER FRITSCH
In the round of sixteen of the 2002 World Cup Germany led 1:0 against Paraguay in stoppage time when Michael Ballack's opponent committed a misconduct. The latter saw the red card; Ballack, who had done nothing remarkable, saw yellow. This poor decision had no impact on the game, but it nevertheless had fatal consequences. In the semifinal against South Korea Ballack received a second, and this time justified, yellow card, which led to a ban for the final. Shortly after, Ballack scored the 1:0 - a heroic feat which even the English newspapers struggled for terms to describe, and for which Michael Ballack was punished.
It is a significant story, because Fate has often been cruel to Ballack. That also holds true for his end with the national team, which Joachim Löw sealed yesterday. When he debuted under Erich Ribbeck almost twelve years ago, the DFB eleven, especially the stars from Munich, were not rated highly by many professionals. That has since changed drastically, now that they are once again amongst the best in the world. Ballack contributed very much to that, but now he is the loser in this development. That is unjust. But it is logical. Because the time is ripe for Ballack's farewell. The nearly 35-year old no longer has the status which he had in the last decade.
The national trainer has distanced himself from the best and most important footballer of the previous decade. In the grey Rudi Völler era (2000-2004) Ballack was the ray of hope. In the fall of 2001, in the relegation game against the Ukraine, his performance and his goals prevented a catastrophe which would have led to the first World Cup without Germany in the final. At the 2002 World Cup, he scored the deciding and only goals in the quarter- and semi-finals. At the 2004 Euro, he stood out especially: surrounded by his colleagues, Ballack was the only one who functioned at the highest international level. Völler's team had only one recipe for success: give Ballack the ball! Naturally, that could not be enough.
In 2006 he was Jürgen Klinsmann's 'Capitano'; the authority on and alongside the field, he co-determined their tactical approach. From the 2008 European Cup his free kick goal against Austria comes to mind, and especially his face, distorted by rage and determination, when he sent the ball on its way. With 42 goals for the national team he is by far the best midfielder in these statistics. He scored with the left, with the right, and with the head.
But the list of tragic moments is equally as long, as if the spirits of conspiracy had sought a target, a victim. In 2002 he missed the World Cup final due to FIFA's petty and pointless yellow card suspension rule. In 2006 in the semi-final FIFA took from him, for suspect reasons, his most important comrade, sergeant Torsten Frings. In 2010 Kevin-Prince Boateng thwarted Ballack's title hopes with a terrible foul.
His club career has also suffered fortune's blows, although he prevailed in the demanding Premier League, and won championships with three different teams: Kaiserslautern, Munich, and Chelsea. In the year 2000 Ballack endured an own goal in Unterhaching, and Leverkusen lost the seemingly secure championship. Two years after that the superior Ballack landed in second place with Bayer in three competitions. In 2008 with Chelsea he lost the Champions League final in the penalty shootout against Manchester Untied. He slumped on the centre line as his teammate Nicholas Anelka missed. Ballack himself had scored.
Ballack also suffered in terms of how people spoke about him. It is perhaps hard to explain why, in spite of his enormous service at the shrine of the national football team, he always had to live with malice. People cried after him that he was eternally second-best, that he had never played in a World Cup final. The best part of the fame for entering the last final to date was skimmed by Oliver Kahn, who had a winning reputation, but who in the final appeared both poor and old with the goals he conceded. And Günter Netzer gave him a very bad time. The then- ARD expert and BILD columnist was mixed up in the collective culture of the DDR, and went so far as to assert that Ballack, a Görlitz native, was not a leader because of his origins. Ballack indulged this laughable accusation for a long time, even though he was only thirteen years old when the Wall came down.
But Ballack is exactly what Netzer was missing: a footballer in the old style. He controls all fouls and intimidations, demands and lives in pecking orders, screams reason into his players, drinks wheat beer in the changing room, and shoots goals when it comes down to it - a leader out of the German picture-books. And precisely for this reason, he is also a character that has gone out of fashion in this era of flat hierarchies.
The national team has separated itself from Ballack in the last three years. Lukas Podolski slapped him during a game because he felt reprimanded. Ballack clashed with the manager and his former teammate Oliver Bierhoff after the lost Vienna final in 2008, and harsh words were exchanged. Spokesmen like Bastian Schweinsteiger, Philipp Lahm, and Arne Friedrich distanced themselves from him. The team saw it as a relief that Ballack was not able to play in the tournament in South Africa.
Ballack, as one hears from the few statements he has made in recent months, cannot understand that he is no longer needed. He feels bitterness; the national team has always been very important to him. True, the DFB talks about reconciliation, but Ballack is handed Löw's decision without a word. He deserves far more than to be dismissed in a press release. On the other hand, Ballack should have recognised the signs of the times and could have announced his retirement himself; Löw gave him the chance to do that for an entire year.
It is understandable that the proud Ballack has not taken that offer; in August he will once again play sham captain with the players who have contributed to his ejection. His counter will stand still at 98 caps - a symbol of the incompleteness of his career.
Ballack and Löw - One of the Two is Lying
A game of betrayal, intrigue, overweening ambition, destroyed dreams, and the power of the media: the case of Ballack is material for the great footballing novel - BY THOMAS KLUPP
No one knows, in the Causa Ballack, who said, texted, or in some other way communicated what to whom at which time - no one other than the involved parties themselves. But since at least one of them is lying and no one knows who, we - the frenzied, confused masses - are no wiser than before. Only the joint efforts of the BND (Federal News Service) and the CIA could bring light in the darkness, by digging through all the headlines and soundbites from Michael Ballack, Jogi Löw, Oliver Bierhoff and Wolfgang Niebsbach since last summer, as well as all the statements of their respective spokesmen, agents, and backers.
On this basis, we suggest, the Captaincy Protocols might at last give rise to the first great footballing novel in the German language - a curious puzzle of betrayal and intrigue, of overweening ambitions and destroyed dreams and the power of the media in our time. And these would only be the obvious themes of the story. To do justice to the complexity of the event, one would have to dig deeper. One would have to probe the labyrinthine structures of the DFB and imagine oneself into the mental universes of its telegenic clique of leaders. One would have to tentatively imagine, say, what walks around in the head of the manager of the national team, Oliver Bierhoff, whenever he watches a game (one million euros for this feeling!). One would also have to remember Jürgen Klinsmann, his visions of aawakening and renewal and his unconditional belief in the collective as the star, which was the beginning of the end of Ballack's national team career. And of course, the story would also need the dramatic moment, perhaps reproduced in a sort of linguistic super-slow-motion, in which one foot brutally smashed into another - at least about one chapter long.
However, one would have to begin more simply. One would have to concentrate first of all on a young man, who at the beginning of the last decade played football a little better than all the other men in the land. Nowhere near as good as the greatest in the field, yet good enough that he was proclaimed the standard-bearer of German football. A standard-bearer for 80 million, almost overnight. What - and this would be the question facing the presently eruptive sensibility of Ballack - what has that made this man? Has the seemingly endless self-confidence of the previous decade so blinded him that he holds himself indispensable? Has he, during his time alone in England, forgotten that the clocks also run in this country, and that the new generation grows stronger day by day? Or has he really succumbed to the greatest blindness in the world of sport, and assumed that past performances are worth more than a whit in the present?
And yet the author would also have to make up his mind about something that cannot be glossed over: the fact that he is writing about someone who, in the admittedly meagre years of German football, was Germany's best player. In the spirit of poetic justice, the man ought to have earned himself a happy ending - not just in the national team, but maybe even with Bayer Leverkusen. Michael Ballack, as he holds aloft the Champions League trophy in the 2011/2012 season - that would be a worthy closing scene to this novel, although perhaps one which skirts the borders of fantasy.
Michael Ballack - Victim of a Conspiracy
Michael Ballack is the most important German player of the last decade. But Fate has been repeatedly cruel to him. - BY OLIVER FRITSCH
In the round of sixteen of the 2002 World Cup Germany led 1:0 against Paraguay in stoppage time when Michael Ballack's opponent committed a misconduct. The latter saw the red card; Ballack, who had done nothing remarkable, saw yellow. This poor decision had no impact on the game, but it nevertheless had fatal consequences. In the semifinal against South Korea Ballack received a second, and this time justified, yellow card, which led to a ban for the final. Shortly after, Ballack scored the 1:0 - a heroic feat which even the English newspapers struggled for terms to describe, and for which Michael Ballack was punished.
It is a significant story, because Fate has often been cruel to Ballack. That also holds true for his end with the national team, which Joachim Löw sealed yesterday. When he debuted under Erich Ribbeck almost twelve years ago, the DFB eleven, especially the stars from Munich, were not rated highly by many professionals. That has since changed drastically, now that they are once again amongst the best in the world. Ballack contributed very much to that, but now he is the loser in this development. That is unjust. But it is logical. Because the time is ripe for Ballack's farewell. The nearly 35-year old no longer has the status which he had in the last decade.
The national trainer has distanced himself from the best and most important footballer of the previous decade. In the grey Rudi Völler era (2000-2004) Ballack was the ray of hope. In the fall of 2001, in the relegation game against the Ukraine, his performance and his goals prevented a catastrophe which would have led to the first World Cup without Germany in the final. At the 2002 World Cup, he scored the deciding and only goals in the quarter- and semi-finals. At the 2004 Euro, he stood out especially: surrounded by his colleagues, Ballack was the only one who functioned at the highest international level. Völler's team had only one recipe for success: give Ballack the ball! Naturally, that could not be enough.
In 2006 he was Jürgen Klinsmann's 'Capitano'; the authority on and alongside the field, he co-determined their tactical approach. From the 2008 European Cup his free kick goal against Austria comes to mind, and especially his face, distorted by rage and determination, when he sent the ball on its way. With 42 goals for the national team he is by far the best midfielder in these statistics. He scored with the left, with the right, and with the head.
But the list of tragic moments is equally as long, as if the spirits of conspiracy had sought a target, a victim. In 2002 he missed the World Cup final due to FIFA's petty and pointless yellow card suspension rule. In 2006 in the semi-final FIFA took from him, for suspect reasons, his most important comrade, sergeant Torsten Frings. In 2010 Kevin-Prince Boateng thwarted Ballack's title hopes with a terrible foul.
His club career has also suffered fortune's blows, although he prevailed in the demanding Premier League, and won championships with three different teams: Kaiserslautern, Munich, and Chelsea. In the year 2000 Ballack endured an own goal in Unterhaching, and Leverkusen lost the seemingly secure championship. Two years after that the superior Ballack landed in second place with Bayer in three competitions. In 2008 with Chelsea he lost the Champions League final in the penalty shootout against Manchester Untied. He slumped on the centre line as his teammate Nicholas Anelka missed. Ballack himself had scored.
Ballack also suffered in terms of how people spoke about him. It is perhaps hard to explain why, in spite of his enormous service at the shrine of the national football team, he always had to live with malice. People cried after him that he was eternally second-best, that he had never played in a World Cup final. The best part of the fame for entering the last final to date was skimmed by Oliver Kahn, who had a winning reputation, but who in the final appeared both poor and old with the goals he conceded. And Günter Netzer gave him a very bad time. The then- ARD expert and BILD columnist was mixed up in the collective culture of the DDR, and went so far as to assert that Ballack, a Görlitz native, was not a leader because of his origins. Ballack indulged this laughable accusation for a long time, even though he was only thirteen years old when the Wall came down.
But Ballack is exactly what Netzer was missing: a footballer in the old style. He controls all fouls and intimidations, demands and lives in pecking orders, screams reason into his players, drinks wheat beer in the changing room, and shoots goals when it comes down to it - a leader out of the German picture-books. And precisely for this reason, he is also a character that has gone out of fashion in this era of flat hierarchies.
The national team has separated itself from Ballack in the last three years. Lukas Podolski slapped him during a game because he felt reprimanded. Ballack clashed with the manager and his former teammate Oliver Bierhoff after the lost Vienna final in 2008, and harsh words were exchanged. Spokesmen like Bastian Schweinsteiger, Philipp Lahm, and Arne Friedrich distanced themselves from him. The team saw it as a relief that Ballack was not able to play in the tournament in South Africa.
Ballack, as one hears from the few statements he has made in recent months, cannot understand that he is no longer needed. He feels bitterness; the national team has always been very important to him. True, the DFB talks about reconciliation, but Ballack is handed Löw's decision without a word. He deserves far more than to be dismissed in a press release. On the other hand, Ballack should have recognised the signs of the times and could have announced his retirement himself; Löw gave him the chance to do that for an entire year.
It is understandable that the proud Ballack has not taken that offer; in August he will once again play sham captain with the players who have contributed to his ejection. His counter will stand still at 98 caps - a symbol of the incompleteness of his career.