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Today one of the best players in the history of German football, Michael Ballack, celebrates his 47th birthday. He never won a single international trophy with both clubs and the national team, but this does not stop fans around the world from classifying the midfielder as a true legend of the “number one sport”. The merits and “curse” of the long-time captain of the German national team will be discussed in the material Sport.
Of course, judging a career by the number of trophies is unacceptable. But it would be strange not to mention this factor when talking about the sports path of a football player. The great goalkeeper Gianluigi Buffon became a world champion, but lost three times in the UEFA Champions League finals and again in the Euro 2012 final. The leader of the Dutch national team, Arjen Robben, won the Champions League for the third time, but at the World Cup he was left with silver and bronze. Let's remember Buffon's compatriot Alessandro del Piero: three defeats in the Champions League finals and the decisive match of the 2000 European Championship.
Lionel Messi's fairy tale had a happy ending: he still won the America's Cup and the World Cup. But what makes the Argentine’s triumph even sweeter is that before that he stumbled several times at the very last moment.
Today’s birthday boy also has four defeats in the super finals… And not a single one victory, which to this day makes fans think of the “Ballack curse”.
2002/Champions League Final
A terrible season for Michael and his club Bayer Leverkusen. By May, the team from Leverkusen approached the status of leader of the Bundesliga, finalist of the German Cup and Champions League. Guess how many gold medals the “aspirin” footballers won in the end? That's right, not a single one. At the finish of the national championship they were overtaken by Borussia Dortmund. In the Cup final, Bayer beat Schalke. Well, in the Champions League final in Glasgow, Leverkusen failed to cope with Real Madrid and the magnificent Zinedine Zidane.
In that confrontation, Bayer confirmed the infamous nickname “NEVERcousin”, and Ballack went to Bayern Munich.
2002/World Championship Final
A fourth silver medal in the 2001/02 season awaited Ballack at the world championship. There he scored the winning goal for South Korea in the semi-finals, but did not participate in the decisive match of the first Asian World Cup in history. Too many yellow cards. Without Michael, the best scorer of the 2002 World Cup, Ronaldo, twice beat the best player of the tournament, Oliver Kahn, and brought Brazil the fifth and currently last gold of the world championship.
2008/Moscow Champions League final
Six years later, Ballack again reached the decisive match of the main club tournament of the Old World. And again, already together with Chelsea, the German stopped one step away from the “eared” trophy. The meeting with Manchester United in the pouring Moscow rain ended with a score of 1:1. Then there was the slippery turf of Luzhniki and the tears of Blues captain John Terry…
Note that Michael converted his penalty kick in the penalty shootout.
2008/European Championship Final
As in 2002, Ballack, after a “trophyless” season, went to a tournament with the German national team (now it was Euro 2008) and, having chalked up two winning goals, scored for gold. But in Austria and Switzerland there were no equals to Spain — the Bundesmannschaft, with its unlucky captain number thirteen, was also unable to break the Fury Roja. In the Vienna final, everything was decided by the goal of Fernando Torres. flew due to injury, and then Joachim Löw’s team set a course for rejuvenating the squad.
There would have been more endings in which Ballack could have tried to lift the “curse.” However, at the home World Cup 2006, the German team lost to the eventual winners of the tournament, the Italians, and eventually became the bronze medalist. And three years later, Michael, together with Chelsea, was vilely “killed” by referee Tom Henning Evrebe in the return leg of the Champions League semi-final against Barcelona… That match at Stamford Bridge is remembered like a dream. The number of mistakes made by the Norwegian judge seems too unrealistic.
A striking episode: in the 96th minute, after the ball hit the Catalan's hand again, Ballack ran after the referee and frantically shouted in his ear, calling for a penalty that would save Chelsea. Didn't put it — 1:1. “Barca” undeservedly went to Rome, where they moved “Manchester United” and brought Josep Guardiola the first Champions League trophy in his coaching career.
But there were, there were bright days for the football player Ballack! Michael became the German champion with Kaiserslautern and Bayern (three times), and lifted the German Cup and the German League Cup three times each. In London, the Chelsea footballer became the winner of the English Premier League (EPL), also adding three national cups, an English League Cup and an English Super Cup to his trophy cabinet.
The German has a lot of individual achievements. Three times Ballack was recognized as the best football player of the year in Germany; he was included in the symbolic teams of different versions dozens of times and, what is more honorable, received a place in the FIFA 100 list. Perhaps this is the legacy of Michael… And also in his integrity and intransigence. Only such a fighter could slap compatriot Kevin-Prince Boateng in the face, refuse to take part in meaningless matches for the national team for the sake of the coveted “hundred” (in the international arena he held 98 official meetings and distinguished himself 43 times) and “give up” on the proposal to wait before leaving sport for the sake of performing in the States.