Michael Ballack
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Age: 25
Position: Midfielder
Country: Ghana
Caps: 39
Goals: 10
Club: Fenerbahce
Previous clubs |  |
Monday, 15, May 2006 12:30
Age: 29
Position: Midfield
Country: Germany
Caps: 63
Goals: 30
Club: Chelsea
Previous clubs: Chemnitzer, Kaiserslautern, Bayer Leverkusen, Bayern Munich
In his own words: It's all or nothing, but that's what we've been expecting all along.
Every now and again a player does something special, and drives an average team to a major final. Michael Ballack did it three times in a single year.
In 2002 he pushed Bayer Leverkusen and Germany to within a game of the German league, the Champions League, and the World Cup. They lost all three matches.
But Ballack emerged from these defeats blameless - ending up as the Uefa midfielder of the year and German player of the year.
He moved on from Bayer to Bayern after the tournament, and has not looked back since.
Two-footed, a clinical header of the ball, and with the timing to arrive late in the box to use these skills to devastating effect, Ballack's goals have propelled Bayern Munich to three doubles in four years.
Averaging a goal every three games in his club career, and one in two for Germany, Ballack's goal-scoring puts the majority of the world's strikers to shame, but to add to this - he made his name as a defensive midfielder.
And now he's coming to the Premiership, but not before a bit of unfinished business in the World Cup.
Four years ago a trip on Lee Chun-Soo to stop a dangerous attack prevented Ballack playing in the final, since that day the nearly man of German football has turned into a triple double winner.
Don't bet against him standing aloft in triumph in Berlin on July 9th, or ever coming second again.
James Andrews.