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Michael Ballack

Personal information
Full name	Michael Ballack
Position(s)	Midfielder
Team information
Current team	Bayern Munich
‡ National team caps and goals, correct as of November 12, 2005

Michael Ballack (born September 26, 1976 in Görlitz, then East Germany) is a German football player. He will play for Chelsea in the English Premier League from the start of the 2006/07 season.

Personal life

Michael Ballack is 6'2 1/2" (189 cm) tall and weighs 176 lbs (80 kg). He is currently unmarried but does have a partner Simeone. With Simeone, he has three children- Louis (born August 16, 2001); Emilio (born September 19, 2002) and Jordi (born March 17, 2005). Michael Ballack has Abitur German A-Levels which he received in 1995. His hobbies include travelling, tennis, golf, watching movies and listening to music.

Club Career

He plays in central midfield for Bayern München in the German Bundesliga as well as in the German national team, which he has captained since 2004. Ballack was transferred to Bayern Munich from Bayer Leverkusen on July 1, 2002, for an undisclosed amount. Before that, he played for Kaiserslautern. He is set to announce that he has joined Chelsea at a press conference called for Monday 15th May 2006.

Ballack is known for being a versatile and well-conditioned player, equally at home in attack and defence, able to play in almost any position in midfield. He made his name as an attacking midfielder with an eye for goal, but Bayern have recently employed him in a deeper role, where he has been able to direct play. He is regarded as one of the most lethal headers in the world but is equally competent with his powerful left and right feet. These attributes have earned him the German player of the year award on three occasions (2002, 2003, 2005), a feat surpassed only by German legend Franz Beckenbauer, who won the award four times. Some experts consider him the most complete footballer in the world today. Since 2004, he has been one of Germany's leading sports icons and the captain of the German national team, which is seeking World Cup glory on home soil.

He is going to be unveiled as Chelsea_FC's newest signing on Monday, May 15 2006 after months of speculation.

Chemnitzer FC

(as of June 13, 1990: Chemnitzer FC)

Michael Ballack started his career with BSG Motor "Fritz Heckert" Karl-Marx-Stadt. ('BSG' stands for Betriebssportgemeinschaft.) His parents sent him to train with the side when he was seven years old, and he immediately caught the attention of coach Steffen Hänisch, who had played second-division football himself in East Germany. What particularly impressed Hänisch was Ballack's delicate touch, which the coach would have attributed to many years' of training if the boy hadn't been so young. Also unusual for his age was Ballack's ability to use both feet with equal authority.

Ballack was slowly eased into the first youth team, finally making his debut on October 4, 1983, when he came on during a 2-1 win over Motor Ascona Karl-Marx-Stadt. The more games he got into, the more obvious his uniqueness became. Ballack invariably made his presence felt and led the side. He also increasingly became a goal-scoring threat: in only his third season he scored as if there was no tomorrow, 57 goals in only 16 games. At the age of ten, he moved on to a bigger club - Karl-Marx-Stadt FC, later to become Chemnitz FC.

The young hopeful who moved to Karl-Marx-Stadt FC didn't have to wait long to taste success. In 1988, the gifted technician won the district indoor championships with his new team. Nurtured by coaches Juergen Haeuberer and Eberhard Schuster, Ballack moved up the ranks, winning the indoor title of Saxony in 1991 and finally, three years later, the proper Under-19 championship of this federal state. (By which time Karl-Marx-Stadt was called Chemnitz again, the name the city had carried until 1953.)

In 1995, Michael Ballack was given his first professional contract, thanks to his impressive silky skills in the role as midfield maestro. Little surprise, then, that he was dubbed the "Little Kaiser", in reference to Franz Beckenbauer. His professional debut came on August 4, 1995, on the first day of the new Second Bundesliga season. But Chemnitz lost this game, 2-1, against Leipzig (Chemnitz's equaliser, incidentally, was scored by Silvio Meissner, today a player with VfB Stuttgart), and that more or less set the tone: at the end of the season, during which Ballack made fifteen appearances, Chemnitz were relegated to the multi-tiered, regional third division. For Ballack himself, however, that season held one great success: on March 26, 1996, he made his debut for Germany's Under-21 side.

In the following season, Ballack became a regular first-team player and almost helped Chemnitz to bounce straight back. He didn't miss a game and scored ten goals for the "Sky Blues". It wasn't enough for Chemnitz to go up, but Ballack managed to win his own, personal promotion: in the summer of 1997, he joined 1. FC Kaiserslautern, who had just returned to the top flight.

1. FC Kaiserslautern

On the back of his strong performances for Chemnitzer FC and Germany's U21 side, Michael Ballack was lured to palatinate's premier club, Kaiserslautern, by coach Otto Rehhagel. This was a great opportunity for the youngster: Kaiserslautern promised to be a fine platform for his talents, since the club had just been promoted back to the Bundesliga.

It was during the seventh game of the 97-98 season, away to Karlsruhe, that Rehhagel decided to throw young Ballack into the Bundesliga for the first time, if only for the final five minutes of the encounter. On March 28, 1998, Ballack found himself in the starting line-up for the first time - the opponents were Bayer Leverkusen, and the novice was given the crucial job of marking playmaker Emerson, his future team-mate, out of the game.

Ballack made sixteen appearances for his new team during the season and thus played a not-too small part in Kaiserslautern's sensational triumph - the club became the first-ever newly promoted team to lift the league title. In the following season, Ballack became both a regular (he made 30 appearances, scoring four goals) and one of the side's leading players. Kaiserslautern reached the quarter finals of the Champions League, but were knocked out by Bayern Munich.

On July 1, 1999, some two months after his first full international, Ballack moved to Bayer Leverkusen at the age of 22. He still had a year left on his contract with Kaiserslautern, which is why Leverkusen paid a transfer fee of 8m deutschmarks (€4.8m).

Bayer 04 Leverkusen

It was at Leverkusen that Ballack made his big breakthrough. Coaches Christoph Daum and Klaus Toppmöller granted him the whole of the pitch as his sovereign territory. With Bayer, he was the holding midfielder in front of the back four as well as the man who pulled the strings in the centre of the pitch as well as the reliable finisher upfront. In his three seasons at the Rhein, he scored 27 goals in the league and a further nine in Europe. And following his move to Bayern he continued right where he'd left off: Ballack found the target an impressive 30 times during his first three years. In 2000, Bayer needed only a draw against minnows SpVgg Unterhaching to lift the league title, but a stunning own goal by Ballack sunk the club. By the time he left the club he had developed into one of Europe's best midfield players. He left Leverkusen after a memorable, if ultimately heartbreaking, 2001/02 season when they came second in the Bundesliga again and were beaten in the UEFA Champions League and German Cup finals (he and four other teammates were even runners-up in the World Cup 2002). Ballack finished with 17 league goals, and his remarkable season led to him being voted into the uefa.com users' Team of 2002 as well being named Germany's Footballer of the Year.

FC Bayern München

After joining FC Bayern München in a €12.9m deal in 2002, Ballack had to adapt to a more defensive role but still managed ten goals as Bayern stormed to the Bundesliga title. He also scored twice in the 3-1 German Cup final win against FC Kaiserslautern.

After a trying second season with the Bavarian giants, Ballack was back to his best in the 2004/05 season as Bayern München completed another double. New coach Felix Magath said he was the only automatic starter in their midfield.

In four seasons at FC Bayern, Ballack won three league and cup doubles and scored 43 goals in 106 matches.

Between 1998 and 2005, Ballack had notched up 61 goals in his domestic league.

International Career

Shortly after signing professional terms with Chemnitz, Michael Ballack first pulled over the famous white shirt with the eagle badge. On March 26, 1996, he stood in the starting XI for the national U21 team's encounter with Denmark. In all, he played 19 matches for this side, scoring four goals. Then, following his move to Kaiserslautern, national coach Berti Vogts called him up to the senior team.

Ballack's first appearance, however, wasn't made until April 28, 1999, by which time the man in charge was called Erich Ribbeck. Germany was playing Scotland on that day, and Ballack came on after sixty minutes to replace Dietmar Hamann. Bizarrely, the Bremen floodlights failed during the course of this match, yet this didn't turn out to be a bad omen for the rest of Ballack's international career.

Euro 2000 wasn't a bright spot for Germany (Ballack only played 63 minutes at this tournament), but the World Cup two years later in Japan and South Korea became a glorious tournament for the country - and primarily for Ballack. Until that time, he wasn't without his detractors, because he suffered the fate every exceptional player has to live with: as soon as Ballack put in a performance that wasn't of the highest class, he came under criticism from the press, while a great game was considered normal. But the World Cup became a triumphal procession for Ballack. His three goals against the Ukraine won the qualifying playoffs and made sure Germany would go to Asia, where he again proved to be the player who made the difference. Only his goals separated Germany from the USA and South Korea during the knock-out rounds and sent his side to the final. But what the experts lauded even more was his last-gasp effort to stop an opponent from scoring in the semi-final - in so doing he risked a yellow card but still didn't shy away from the tackle. That proved his leadership qualities. In the end, he was booked indeed and had to sit out the final.

Following Euro 2004, Jürgen Klinsmann replaced Rudi Völler at the helm of the national team and made Ballack the side's captain. He'll thus be the man to lead the team - on and off the pitch - in its attempt to reach the ultimate goal, winning the World Cup on home soil in the summer of 2006. In a warm-up in his home country, Ballack scored the fourth goal in the 4-1 thrashing of the USA in late March 2006 to prepare for the World Cup in Germany.

In his first 60 internationals, Ballack found the net 29 times.

Statistics

Club

• Bundesliga: 74 goals in 229 Games Played

Template:FnbIncludes

National team statistics

• National Team: 30 Goals in 63 Games Played

Milestones

• Selected to FIFA's 100 Greatest Living Players of All Time

External links

• Official site
• Statistics from fussballdaten.de
• Information on the player
• Soccer Digest Article
• "The Definition of Unperturbed" Article
• "Balanced Ballack" Article
• Portait from fcbayern.de

• 1976 births
• Chelsea F.C. players
• Bayer 04 Leverkusen players
• Bayern Munich players
• Chemnitzer FC players
• FC Kaiserslautern players
• FIFA 100
• FIFA World Cup 2002 players
• German footballers
• Living people
• UEFA Euro 2004 players
• UEFA Euro 2000 players