A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke

by Reng, Ronald

  Jörg could understand that in his difficult moments Robert wanted to sort things out all by himself. ‘I’m like that too,’ he says.

  In the autumn of 1998, when Borussia Mönchengladbach couldn’t stop making mistakes and had a six-week, seven-game run of losses, Robert turned himself into an individual sportsman. The loneliness of the goalkeeper has often been exaggerated and lamented in literature, but for the goalkeeper in a declining team, loneliness is a blessing. He plays his own game and finds his victories in defeat. He conceded two goals to Bayern Munich but thought about the five fine saves he had shown. At least he’s still making saves, the experts said. ‘While chaos rages, he stays calmly in Gladbach,’ wrote the Düsseldorfer Express.

  8. Robert in 1998 during his time with Mönchengladbach.

  ‘Calm, serenity, equilibrium, class’ – those were the qualities attributed to him by the distinguished coach Jupp Heynckes, who had led Real Madrid to their Champions League victory six months earlier and who now, on a sabbatical in his home town of Mönchengladbach, often attended Borussia’s games. ‘He had always been more advanced than the rest of us, in his ideas, in his behaviour, in his speech,’ said Borussia’s midfielder Marcel Ketelaer, who had played with Robert in the national youth team. ‘He was always more grown up than we were.’

  ‘Mental strength’ was a fashionable expression of the newly psychologised sport. Everyone saw the Borussia goalkeeper as a model of the new sportsman. They gallantly overlooked the fact that he sometimes didn’t hurry out of the goal to catch a cross, or allowed Hertha BSC to score a goal when he let a shot ricochet. There is little that moves the football-going public as much as a rookie goalkeeper among hard men; he’s celebrated for saves that experienced goalkeepers barely notice. Robert would only fully understand this years later when he was an older international goalkeeper among young rivals.

  In Mönchengladbach the players tried to deceive themselves about their unparalleled bad run. They kept making jokes in the changing-room. In all the laughter they couldn’t hear that some players talked over each other rather than to each other. Jörgen Pettersson used up all his energy in a mute conflict with his fellow striker Toni Polster. No one had anything against Robert. He adopted a listening role during tactical discussions in various corners of the changing-room, he was friendly to almost everyone, he laughed when others railed against the coach – and no one apart from Marco Villa got to know him any better.

  The coach had provided an opportunity for mirth when ‘Friedel Rausch went off on one’, as Jörg Neblung put it. ‘If I played Martin Schneider in defence in the form he’s in, people would think, is Rausch gay and sleeping with Schneider or what?’ the coach teased at a press conference. Then, in September, Rausch was dismissed. Head of the board of directors Michael Viehof said, ‘This time it’s going to take more than the firing of a coach.’ So the club also dismissed its sporting director, Rolf Rüssmann.

  In its first twenty-two years in the Bundesliga, Borussia Mönchengladbach had managed with a total of three coaches. In 1998, Robert experienced four changes of coach in a year.

  During the Christmas holiday, Robert and Teresa went to see her family in Bad Windsheim. Robert’s father was hurt. Did his son like being with his in-laws more than he liked being with him? He didn’t dare talk to Robert about it.

  Family gatherings were very important to Dirk Enke. At Christmas, on birthdays, during holidays, he stressed his belief that a divided family belonged together. Robert often forgot birthdays. Sometimes his mother came to his rescue. She would phone him solicitously: it’s your father’s birthday today, or your niece’s. ‘I thought it was a real shame that communication between us was so limited,’ his father says. He waited constantly for an invitation to Mönchengladbach. When none came, he tried to find excuses to visit his son. He’d like to see the Bayern game, he’d be about to go see his brother in Detmold – so he could just pop in and see Robert, if he did not mind.

  Robert didn’t think you had to invite your parents or your brothers and sisters. If they wanted to come, they’d come. At Christmas he went to Teresa’s parents’ for the simple reason that their celebrations were more traditional.

  Bad Windsheim is surrounded by fields and woods. On the last day of 1998 Robert wanted to go for a jog.

  ‘I’ll come with you and take the dogs for a walk,’ Teresa said.

  ‘No, you don’t need to, stay with your parents.’

  Of course, she went with him.

  They drove into the fields behind the Galgenbuck hill, a remote area and ideal for letting the dogs run about. Have fun, she said, before he set off.

  Ten minutes later he was back. His eyes were swollen and he kept sneezing. And there was a wheezing noise in his throat.

  ‘I can’t breathe!’

  They dashed home. In the bathroom Teresa found an old asthma inhaler. Robert pumped away at it like a man possessed. But the active ingredient wasn’t getting into his lungs; his windpipe was too swollen.

  Teresa’s father took him to the hospital. The wheezing in Robert’s throat was the loudest sound in the car. Her father ran ahead and threw the door to the emergency department open. There was no one at reception. Half a minute passed, then three minutes, and at last two nurses appeared. They rolled Robert into the intensive care unit on a gurney. His eyes were shut and he was concentrating hard on breathing in and out through his constricted windpipe, but he heard one nurse saying to the other, ‘Isn’t that Gladbach’s goalie, the one who always packs them in?’

  His condition stabilised. He spent the afternoon in bed with an oxygen pipe in his nose, unable to open his swollen eyelids. At one point a nurse asked him, ‘Herr Enke, do you want to read something?’ At least that made him chuckle.

  He celebrated New Year with Teresa in the general ward. It seemed he was allergic to apples and celery, the doctors told him after they’d examined him. He could probably digest each foodstuff on its own without any problems, but he had had celery soup in the evening and an apple tart the next morning, and this had brought on an attack. If Teresa hadn’t been there when he went jogging, he would almost certainly have died.

  A few weeks later the event had become an anecdote that he liked to tell: guess what the nurse said when my eyes were closed and I was gasping for air! Other than that, Teresa and Robert didn’t give any more thought to the kind of chance events that determine whether someone lives or dies.

  At the training-camp in January 1999, Marco Villa prepared himself for Robert’s usual explosions of fury. By the third day his friend was suddenly bothered by everything. Marco called these phases ‘Robbi’s days’.

  ‘How loud is that television!’

  ‘Say the word, Robbi, and I’ll turn it down.’

  Without replying, Robert went to the bathroom.

  ‘You’ve used my towel!’ he called into the room.

  ‘I just used any old towel. There’s a fresh one in the drawer.’

  ‘And why’s the toilet seat dirty again? I’ve told you a million times not to pee standing up!’

  ‘Fine, Robbi,’ said Marco, still watching the television, waiting for Robbi’s days to pass.

  News arrived at the training-camp: Uwe Kamps had had another operation on his Achilles heel; he wouldn’t be coming back that season. Robert had no competition in the Borussia goal until the summer. But what would happen after that? His contract was due to run out in July. The club management seemed to have forgotten that. Ever since Rüssmann had been fired no one seemed to be worried about the future. The present was already too much for the people in charge. President Wilfried Jacobs summed up his time in office with Borussia with self-righteous concision: ‘In twenty months I had the misfortune not to have a single nice hour.’

  The second half of the season turned out to be a copy of the first. By April, Borussia Mönchengladbach, still at the bottom of the league, were already talking about their last chance.

  On Saturday, in Nuremberg, we’ve got to
win.

  Two days before the match coach Rainer Bonhof called Robert into his office. He had to plan the new season: could he count on him?

  ‘I can’t exactly say yet.’

  ‘Robert, please. I need clarity.’

  Robert wanted to be honest, to do the right thing.

  ‘OK, then, I’ll leave,’ he said.

  He didn’t want to play for a disorganised club in the Second Bundesliga. And that was exactly where Borussia was going to be next season. But he gave the coach another reason: he was leaving because he didn’t know where he would stand when Kamps came back.

  Bonhof said that if Robert was absolutely sure, he ought to announce his decision straight away at a press conference.

  Robert was irritated. What was the point? he asked. Now, right before the crucial game in the relegation battle, it would only cause unnecessary trouble.

  No, it was better if things were cleared up right now.

  Robert didn’t understand. Surely Bonhof knowing was enough. He’d be able to start looking for another goalkeeper. ‘I think it might be better not to tell the public,’ Robert said, carefully and politely.

  After training, Bonhof sat down in the press hall at the Bökelberg Stadium, poured himself a glass of water and announced that he had some bad news. Robert Enke would be leaving Borussia at the end of the season.

  On Saturday, Teresa’s parents went to the Frankenstadion in Nuremberg – Bad Windsheim was only seventy kilometres away. They spotted the bed sheet straight away. It was flapping over an advertising hoarding in front of the away fans end. ‘Borussians: Kamps, Frontzeck, Eberl’ it said, and beside it, divided by a clean line in the middle, ‘Traitors: Enke, Feldhoff’.

  Robert Enke had been the darling of the season. Now the Mönchengladbach fans were supporting their team with cries like ‘Enke, you Stasi pig!’, ‘Robert Enke, mercenary and traitor!’, or simply ‘Uwe Kamps, Uwe Kamps – Uuuuwe Kamps!’

  Mönchengladbach lost 2–0 to Nuremberg, who were also threatened with relegation – a team that lately had been in the hands of a new coach called Friedel Rausch. The sportswriters were waiting behind the mobile barriers in the Frankenstadion tunnel. Robert knew what they were going to ask, and he wouldn’t let anything show, he had decided.

  How painful was the abuse you got, Robert?

  ‘The shouting wasn’t nice, certainly, but somehow it was also to be expected.’

  Were you annoyed that the coach made your decision to leave Borussia public?

  ‘I told the coach about my concerns. But probably not enough.’

  He sounded impressively matter-of-fact. At moments like that, when he made an effort to look relaxed, ‘his face divided’, his mother says. By way of proof she produces a few photographs. When he wanted to look relaxed, it is clear from the pictures, his mouth smiled and his eyes remained unmoved.

  Bochum were their next opponents. Just minutes before kick-off the stewards were frantically clearing the goal where Robert had taken up position. Around him lay toilet paper, lighters, plastic beer mugs. Behind the goal stood the Borussia fans.

  ‘Look, there he is, the mercenary and traitor!’

  He wouldn’t let anything show.

  When he easily deflected a low shot from Bochum’s Kai Michalke, the Mönchengladbach fans whistled wildly. A few hundred of them wanted to whistle every time he touched the ball.

  In the last minute of play Borussia took a 2–1 lead. In the same minute they promptly conceded a goal that Robert couldn’t have saved.

  ‘Stasi-swine, Stasi-swine!’

  Teresa walked exhaustedly to the marquee where the players met their friends and families after the game. ‘It’s madness, what they’re doing to you.’

  ‘It’s part of the job.’

  With calm resolution Robert told Teresa not to go to the stadium for the last home games of the season, to spare her nerves. She was so taken aback by his self-confidence that she didn’t contradict him.

  ‘I was just amazed,’ says Jörg Neblung. ‘How level-headed is he, then?’

  Flippi and Jörg were regulars at the marquee. It was about time to find a new employer for Robert. Some clubs were interested in him – AS Roma, Hertha BSC – but there were already two concrete offers, from 1860 Munich and Benfica. In 1999–2000, Portugal’s favourite club would be trained by Jupp Heynckes. Norbert Pflipsen’s notion of work didn’t entail making a special effort to look for better offers if you already had a good one. Apart from that, he was very busy finding a new club for Borussia’s nineteen-year-old midfielder Sebastian Deisler. It was said that Germany hadn’t seen such a player since Günter Netzer in 1972.

  So, to put it briefly, Flippi said, he was in favour of Benfica. They had offered an amazing contract, Robert could play in the Champions League for them, and Jupp was the coach. He’d known Jupp for thirty years – an excellent man.

  I’ll have to think about it, Robert said.

  First of all Borussia had to play in Leverkusen. It’s our last chance, they said.

  When they pulled up at the Ulrich-Haberland Stadium some Borussia fans formed a guard of honour and applauded. Before the games the fans cheered the professionals, after the games they threatened them. ‘How absurd,’ Marco said, and suddenly started waving back at the fans, smiling at them and calling out words no one could hear through the double-glazed panes: ‘Hallo, you stupid arses, hallo!’

  ‘Of course, he says, ‘it wasn’t aimed at anyone personally. I just wanted to build a barrier, protect myself from the hatred that would later be spilled over us.’

  ‘Come on, join in, Robbi,’ urged Marco.

  Robert hesitated.

  ‘Come on, Robbi.’

  ‘Hallo, you silly arses, hallo!’

  Once he’d managed to say it, things went quite smoothly. Yes, it was good to rant.

  They lost the game 4–1.

  ‘Without Enke we will rise again!’ sang the Mönchengladbach fans.

  ‘Without Enke you’ll go back down!’ answered the Leverkusen supporters.

  Half an hour after the final whistle, a thousand Mönchengladbach fans were holding out on the terraces to commiserate. ‘I take my hat off to those fans,’ said coach Bonhof. He said nothing at all about the tirades against Robert by those same fans.

  The reporters were waiting. What do you think of a coach like that, Robert?

  ‘I suppose it wasn’t the best idea to announce my departure in the middle of the relegation battle. I should have stated my concerns more firmly. Neither the coach nor me expected such violent attacks.’

  He thought he always had to try to see things from other people’s points of view. Bonhof had probably just handled things clumsily, without any bad intentions. And it was quite natural for the fans to look for someone to blame after a season like that.

  He thought a goalkeeper should always seek the blame in himself first.

  Robert told Teresa he couldn’t go to Portugal in the middle of the football season, not even for one and a half training-free days – what if it got out? Teresa must look at Lisbon for him. It was decided she’d take her mother with her.

  Jupp Heynckes flew to Portugal at the end of April to sort out the last details of his contract with Benfica; Flippi, Jörg Neblung, Teresa and her mother went with him. Heynckes would present Benfica’s club president with the signing of Robert Enke as a condition for his signature.

  As they walked through the arrivals hall of the Aeroporto da Portela, for the first time in his life Jörg heard Portuguese being spoken. He had thought it would sound like Spanish. Suddenly Portugal seemed a long, long way away.

  The translator, sent by Benfica, greeted them in grammatically perfect German. Had they had a good flight? Welcome to Lisbon. On the drive into the city, Teresa asked about residential areas.

  ‘Could you please repeat your question,’ the translator said.

  Could she recommend a nice area to live in Lisbon?

  ‘What did you say?’

&
nbsp; Teresa became aware that she would have to answer her questions all by herself. And she would have to give up her studies if they moved to Portugal.

  As she walked with her mother across Praça Rossio and climbed the hills of the Bairro Alto, with its views across the Tagus to the Atlantic, she was seized by the feeling that this city existed in a far-away world. But when they were sitting that evening on the restaurant terrace in the Expo site, the huge sails of the Vasco da Gama Bridge glittering in the night and the waiters serving sea bass baked in salt, all of a sudden it seemed enticing.

  So? Robert said when she got back.

  ‘It’s a beautiful city. As far as I’m concerned we could go there.’

  Aha, he said.

  A few days later Flippi rejected 1860 Munich. I’ll try my luck in Portugal, Robert had decided after Heynckes had explained the project to him in his sitting-room.

  ‘You should really take a look at the city yourself,’ said Teresa.

  He had no time at the moment, he replied. They had to win in Freiburg – it was their very last chance.

  They lost 2–1. After thirty-four years in the Bundesliga, Borussia Mönchengladbach were relegated for the first time. It felt like a sort of salvation. The team had had to cope with the feeling of just having been relegated every Saturday for weeks. At last they had certainty.

  They ended the season with a pitiful four victories out of thirty-four games; since hitting bottom place in early autumn they had stayed there without interruption. The third-from-bottom club, Friedel Rausch’s Nuremberg, also going down, were sixteen points ahead of them. Robert had let in seventy-three goals. And after all of them the headlines had read ‘Enke outstanding’, ‘Reliable Enke’, ‘Enke a great white hope’. He let in the last two of the seventy-three at the Bökelberg against Dortmund, and once again the fans cried, ‘Look, there he is, the mercenary and the traitor!’

  ‘It sounds silly, but it was fun playing in the Bundesliga,’ he told the sportswriters.

  He would let nothing show.