Quote of the Day: Michael Ballack on his Nearly Man Status

July 7th, 2008 | By: Jan | 1 Comment »

BILD: You have won eight titles and came second ten times in the last ten years - how much of a bitter pill to swallow is this?

Ballack: „Why bitter pill? I think that I have been playing successful football in the last couple of years. Some people win just one title and spend their lives revelling in that while others never win anything. Of course I am missing a big international title, but who can show off a better record than me anyway? Someone should come and explain to me, why people nowadays accuse me of winning the runner up medal at the World Cup in 2002 with Rudi Völler. My goals in the quarter and semi-final sent Germany into the final - for which I had been suspended. A top performance is negatively re-evaluated years later. I don’t get it.”

BILD: Would you nevertheless swap all your national titles for one big international trophy?

Ballack: „No, why should I do that?“

Michael Ballack in an interview with the German tabloid BILD.

Tags: Michael Ballack, Players

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Comments

By diana | July 8th, 2008 at 3:18 am

I still remembered what one of the newspapaers here wrote ahead of the final (it went to print before the news of Ballack’s injury). If Ballack gets another runner-up medal, he should reconsider his jersey number. Something like that. It wrote that he wore No.13 for both Chelsea and Germany.

On the day after the final in Vienna, in the newspapers I read, other than analysing the final, I was not surprised on the editiorials about Ballack’s nearly-man status.

Sometimes sports is like that. Unless you ever won something, people are not really going to remember you had been a runner-up…ten times. I remembered on the day before the final, reading what the now-former Spain coach Luis Aragones was telling to the media that he told his players no one remembers who come in second in any competition. Harsh but true.

Posted from Singapore