Tim Meyer is retiring after 21 years as national team doctor. The 55-year-old experienced his sixth World Cup tournament in Qatar. He has experienced a lot with four national coaches – and in the end a pandemic.
Hansi Flick has to look for a new doctor – at least for the national football team. After the World Cup in Qatar, Tim Meyer ended his work as team doctor after 21 years.
The decision was made for the 55-year-old before the tournament, as Meyer explains in an interview with the German Press Agency about his motives, his diverse tournament experiences and the cooperation with a total of four national coaches including Flick.
Question: After more than two decades, you are retiring as a doctor for the national football team. What are your motivations?
Answer: Actually, it’s 21 years. At some point you get to an age where you can imagine doing other things than sprinting to the sidelines and handing water bottles to footballers. After six world championships I’ve already seen a lot. The question inevitably arises: What is to come? I had been thinking about this step for a long time.
Question: Was the next tournament in Qatar, which was disappointing from a sporting point of view, the last push at most?
Answer: No, not at all. I already knew it before the World Cup, but only discussed it with my closest friends, my wife and a few good friends. I went into the tournament knowing that I would retire as team doctor afterwards.
Question: And after the end did you inform the national coach and the DFB promptly?
Answer: I first informed Hansi Flick and Oliver Bierhoff on the return flight from Qatar. But that was only for a very short time, because other things were in the foreground for the two of them, so the national coach and I called again a few days later. I then informed other people orally, but some of them probably only found out about it through the press release.
Question: You experienced the home World Cup in 2006, which was certainly an emotional highlight of your tenure. Why didn’t you want to treat yourself to the home European Championship next year?
Answer: I had this World Cup experience in my own country. And it’s not always the case that you perceive repeated events just as well. That’s why I don’t mourn it. I would now like to further develop and intensify my international contacts. That excites me. My decision doesn’t have to mean that I’m completely unemployed for the European Championship.
Question: What will you take away from your time as national team doctor?
Answer: First of all, I am grateful to the DFB for this time. Not everyone has the opportunity to perform this function. I’ve experienced great things. Of course, the World Cup in Brazil is at the top, especially because we won it. But it was also a special setting in South America. Everyone saw the conditions as very difficult, it was even said that a European team could not win on the continent. The medical challenges were also greater than in the other tournaments. At no tournament before or after was I as involved as a doctor in the entire preparation as in 2014.
Question: And otherwise?
Answer: I can say that I’ve been really lucky with the tournaments. My first was equally far away in Japan and South Korea. That was very exciting for me as a young doctor. The home World Cup that followed was very emotional. The entire German population supported the tournament. The team that became world champions four years later was born in South Africa 2010 – an incredibly dynamic tournament for us with great games. And even after 2014 things didn’t get bad right away. In 2016 we should have been European champions. In 2017, the Confed Cup was won with a junior team. After that, unfortunately, things got worse.
Question: You weren’t the team doctor who rushed onto the pitch to the injured players at internationals. Can you say that you were more of a doctor in the background, responsible for the team pharmacy, for anti-doping management and performance diagnostics?
Answer: You can put it that way. My area of responsibility was classic “sports medicine and general medicine”. I’ve really rarely played on the pitch. Many years ago, when my orthopedic colleague was busy with another player in the dressing room, I had to run onto the pitch. Miroslav Klose was affected at the time. And then he said, “What are you doing here?” I was more or less responsible for medical management beyond injuries and I also take it upon myself to have prevented one or the other pseudo-medical nonsense that was repeatedly brought to our attention.
Question: What do you mean?
Answer: It is often of value for a national team to have a clinically and scientifically proven person on board. Some criticism then does not even come up or can be countered more easily. The DFB entourage for international matches consists of many supporters who can get sick and also have previous illnesses. We team doctors are not only responsible for the care of the players.
Question: You have experienced four national coaches: Rudi Völler, Jürgen Klinsmann, Joachim Löw and most recently Hansi Flick. Were there differences? Has your work changed?
Answer: Of course, these coaches were very different personalities. But what changed the most were the players, their origins and education. From around 2008, almost all of them had gone through the youth academies at the Bundesliga clubs. They have learned a completely different lifestyle that is much more sport-oriented than in earlier times. But trainers always have a great influence on the cooperation, no question.
Question: To what extent?
Answer: I was in contact with Jogi Löw the longest. Rudi Völler was the team boss in 2001, the coach was formally Michael Skibbe. Both made it very easy for you, they are really great people. Jürgen Klinsmann in 2004 meant a real break in the management of the national team. He pushed a lot, pushed for fundamental changes. And there was a lot more staff in the entire team. Jürgen has launched many innovations, but also triggered various conflicts due to overlapping competencies that may not always have been intended.
Question: After that, Joachim Löw was national coach for 15 years. How was it?
Answer: I’ve learned to really appreciate Jogi. The confidence he gave was brilliant to work with. I appreciate him as a football expert, as far as I can tell, but also as a person and as an organizer. Jogi really had a steady hand and could delegate. With Hansi, someone came back who I already knew from his time as a yogi’s assistant and who I have come to appreciate as the link between the coaching staff, supervisors and players. He came back in a new role in 2021 and fortunately has not lost his empathy, although that would be quite conceivable as the responsible coach.
Question: Was Corona the biggest challenge of your tenure? In 2020 you became head of the medical task force for the so-called special game operation and have become really well known as a result. Many in the football industry praised you as the savior of professional football in Germany.
Answer: It was definitely – also because of the public discussions – the most stressful time of my work in football so far. Corona not only affected the national team, but German football and also UEFA, where I am chairman of the medical committee. There was already a lot of pressure. It was also the most annoying time as a team doctor because you couldn’t influence many things. Suddenly players showed up who tested positive upon arrival or a few days later. And as a doctor you are right in the middle of a huge hustle and bustle of swabs and contact avoidance. You get a faint feeling from time to time. Despite all the precautionary measures, I thought at the team hotel: hopefully nobody will wake up in the morning and start coughing.
Question: How will it be for you when, after such a long time, the first international matches take place at the end of March without you on the German bench? Will you then be a TV viewer? Or even in the stadium?
Answer: I don’t know yet. The feeling will certainly be a bit strange if I should be sitting in front of the television. But at some point you have to take the step. And it’s nice when you decide when to do it yourself. What I will definitely miss is the community among the caregivers. There are still people like physiotherapist Wolfgang Bunz, TV expert Uli Voigt or sports psychologist Hans-Dieter Hermann, with whom I have worked for two decades. The evenings together after work and the discussions about the last or next game, yes, I will miss that.
Personal details: Tim Meyer, born October 30, 1967 in Nienburg (Lower Saxony), studied medicine and sports in Hanover and Göttingen. From 2001 to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar he was the national team’s doctor. He is Medical Director of the Institute for Sports and Preventive Medicine at the University of Saarland in Saarbrücken. Among other things, he heads the medical committees of the DFB and UEFA.
