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Hummels and Deisler once played together at FC Bayern. Hummels was a promising young player, Deisler a failed talent of the century
What: REUTERS
At the age of 27, Sebastian Deisler suddenly declared his career over. Worn down by injuries, but also by the machinery of professional football. For Mats Hummels it was once a decisive experience.
Et was a pretty lousy day. Some rain, five degrees, no sun to be seen. On January 16, 2007, Sebastian Deisler appeared in front of the press in Munich. The offensive player, who was once praised as a German hope, then 27 years old, had a long period of suffering behind him. Physically, his knee had been operated on five times alone. But above all emotionally. Four years earlier, he had to be hospitalized at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich for depression.
On this gray and dingy January morning, the FC Bayern professional announced the end of his career. He has “Lost the joy and the fun. In the end it was torture for me. I can’t go on ”.
The most talented player of his time with his very first Bundesliga goal – a solo over 60 meters in the game of his ex-club Gladbach against 1860 Munich in March 1999 – which caused raptures and dreams for the first time, resigned suddenly. Perhaps this feat at a young age was a scene that had initiated its decline as a whiz kid, as the “Zeit” wrote at the time: “Because Deisler was not struck down with criticism, rather crushed with affection.”
“I haven’t seen someone like Deisler often in my life”
He himself gave the “Tagesspiegel” an informative interview after treating his depression. “The stress we are exposed to in public every day is something a normal person cannot even imagine,” he said. In the end, he no longer had the physical and mental stability to withstand it.
Looking back on January 16, 2007, Borussia Dortmund’s defense chief Mats Hummels revealed in his podcast, “Alone is difficult”, was very close to him. With André Schürrle, Benedikt Höwedes and Sandro Wagner, players who “accompanied Hummels blatantly”, as he said, have resigned this year. Reason enough for the 31-year-old to talk about the most touching, spectacular and surprising career ends for him. Just like that from Deisler in particular.
Deisler when he left in January 2007
Source: pa / Stephan Janse / Stephan Jansen
For Hummels, Deisler was “one of the talents of the century … that was a footballer like I have not seen him often in my life and who ended his career completely out of nowhere, at least for all outsiders”.
Hummels was “touched by it back then because I knew him, because I trained with him and played football, because I was a big fan of the way he played. I thought that a really good player got lost there. That was a very emotional end for me back then when I was 17 or 18. “Hummels was a junior player at FC Bayern at the time, and he got his first professional contract in the year Deisler retired.
Things have become quiet around Deisler since his resignation. A good sign for Hummels: “You don’t know anything about him, and I don’t want to know anything. I want him to have his peace and quiet, to lead his life so that someone like that gets his peace and that is accepted. “
Uli Hoeneß tells a moving story
As part of an event organized by the Robert Enke Foundation, Bavaria’s President Uli Hoeneß tells a moving story about Sebastian Deisler.
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