A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke

by Reng, Ronald

  ‘Even I thought, does it have to be every day?’ Teresa says.

  Robert Enke’s second season at Benfica started with a farewell. In September 2000 Jupp Heynckes gave up only four days into the campaign. ‘I can’t stand this any more,’ he said. Benfica had ended its first year with Heynckes and Robert third in the Primeira Liga. With fifteen points more than the previous year, Heynckes stressed; two places behind Sporting and ineligible for the Champions League, the media and fans grumbled. Heynckes hadn’t been paid for nine months.

  For Robert, his sponsor’s step-down didn’t seem a watershed moment. In the course of a year in Lisbon he had become more independent, not least as a goalkeeper.

  A new coach arrived, and most things at Benfica went on as before. The cheques came in two weeks late, the club president João Vale e Azevedo was arrested on suspicion of embezzlement, the Portuguese parliament debated the club’s situation, and the finance minister told MPs about £50 million in debts and ‘criminal intrigues’. The public, however, measured Benfica not against these reports but against their glorious past.

  After Benfica had lost 1–0 to Boavista, immediately after Heynckes’s departure, and then drawn 2–2 with Braga, he sat at home barely capable of conducting a normal conversation with his wife. His thoughts kept taking him back to the goals he wasn’t to blame for.

  ‘OK, that’s enough, let’s go out,’ Teresa said, suddenly firmly resolved. ‘You can’t only ever enjoy life when you’ve played well.’

  They drove to Belém. He went along unenthusiastically.

  People stopped him in the street there. ‘Uenk, what’s up with Benfica?’ ‘Uenk, why have you stopped winning?’ He smiled, he gave a few vacuous answers, they went for a walk. After that he was more relaxed.

  Was he learning to shrug things off? Was it possible to shrug things off?

  The new coach was thirty-seven and had never before been responsible for a professional team. His name was José Mourinho. Years later, when he became ‘The Special One’ at Chelsea and Inter Milan, sports journalists wrote about his fascinating arrogance and his big words. At that time, with Benfica, Robert merely noted – enthusiastically – the tactical precision, the infectious euphoria and his affection for the players. ‘He was the best coach in my career.’ After less than four months he had gone. Insulted by the club’s refusal to extend his contract beyond next summer, even after five wins in a row, including a 3–0 victory in a derby against Sporting, Mourinho handed in his notice. When he said goodbye to the players, his eyes filled up.

  It was time to turn the heating on again in Lisbon. Cosy and warm was something else, but with a bit of imagination the stoves in Sassoeiros made them feel it was pleasant enough in the house. When they were invited to dinner by Robert’s team-mate Paulo Madeira, they felt better straight away: other people in Lisbon were shivering in badly insulated houses too.

  In the changing-room, Robert had found a little group of work-mates: Madeira and Moreira, and Pierre van Hooijdonk and Fernando Meira, too. ‘What I remember about Robert is this,’ Moreira says. ‘He said a friendly Bom dia! to all the players, but he only really had contact with a very small group, even when he was made team captain.’

  Benfica went on comparing badly with their glorious past and finished that 2000–01 season sixth. The team’s undistinguished performances only made the goalkeeper’s saves look all the more outstanding. ‘Although I was there often, no football moments have lingered in my memory,’ says Jörg Neblung. ‘It’s funny – or perhaps not. The football was okay, but the really lovely thing was life in Lisbon.’ For instance, Jörg refused to come out of the shower every morning – ‘the loveliest shower in the world with this huge shower-head, as if you were standing under a wonderful, hot cloud’. And he loved the lemon trees in the garden in Sassoeiros. He and Robert spontaneously started playing barefoot football with one that was lying on the ground until the game had to be abandoned because the lemon got stuck on Jörg’s big toe. Where are we going? Robert asked in the afternoon. Let’s call in on Marc. So they went to see a friend in his record shop, listened to music, stood together until it was evening. Right, come on, let’s go to the Blues Café.

  Robert’s mother visited for the New Year. They celebrated in the Montemar in Cascais, where the blue of the Atlantic merged with the black of night through the wide restaurant windows. The diners wore Prada suits and Gucci dresses and spoke in subdued voices; after midnight, Robert’s mother started a conga to see in 2001. Teresa joined in, and after a few minutes the two of them were dragging around half the gaggle of posh guests.

  ‘Come on, join in!’ his mother called to Robert, who was still sitting in his chair.

  13. The Portugal years: Robert with Walter Junghans (far left) and Pierre van Hooijdonk (far right).

  ‘Mother, please.’

  ‘What? No one here knows me.’

  ‘But they know me!’

  ‘Those were the small moments that were really big,’ says Jörg. ‘Times you remember as the best in your life.’

  Once Benfica asked Robert to visit a hospital, to cheer up the children in the cancer ward. Teresa went with him. When he stepped through the door, one boy abruptly turned away.

  ‘He’s a big Benfica fan,’ the nurse whispered to Robert.

  Robert tried to talk to the boy, once, twice, three times. Finally he charmed an answer from him, but the boy stubbornly went on looking at the wall. He couldn’t bear his idol to see him hairless, suffering, ill.

  After the visit the Enkes went for a walk on the beach. The tension fell away from them slowly. At last they broke their silence.

  ‘Those poor children,’ said Teresa.

  ‘And their parents,’ said Robert.

  The idea came to them pretty much at the same time: ‘How lucky we are to have the lives we have.’

  SEVEN

  Ever Further, Ever Higher

  ON A SCRAP of paper Robert signed a contract with Teresa.

  ‘I, Robert Enke, hereby declare that I will not henceforth watch La Ola except when a) Teresa isn’t here, b) Teresa is asleep or c) she expressly gives me permission.’

  It was an attempt to use humour to deflate an issue that seemed to be turning into a conflict during their third year in Lisbon. He was watching excessive amounts of football again, even the La Ola programme on a Monday, with match reports from the Italian or Greek leagues.

  ‘I never realised that part of the reason he watched football matches was to improve his goalkeeping skills,’ says Teresa. ‘And I never thought: does watching football help him not to think about his own game? I was just irritated because all of a sudden he spent too many evenings in front of the telly.’

  At the end of the season, in June 2002, his contract with Benfica would run out. Robert brooded over which club he should move to; staying in Lisbon, where he was happy, didn’t seem like an option. ‘It was time for the next step,’ says Jörg Neblung.

  Manchester United, the superpower of globalised football, had wanted to sign Robert in the summer of 2001. United’s coach Alex Ferguson phoned him in person and tried to sound comprehensible in spite of his thick Scottish accent. Benfica indicated to Robert that the club wouldn’t mind if he left Lisbon. They needed cash, such as United’s offer of about three and a half million pounds, more than they needed a goalkeeping star.

  He turned down Ferguson’s offer. ‘Yes, some players actually do refuse an offer from Manchester United,’ Ferguson remarked.

  In his first year in Manchester, he would have played between ten and fifteen games as a substitute for the French world champion Fabien Barthez – this was guaranteed, said Ferguson, ‘and in two or three years Enke would have replaced Barthez as our number one. That was my plan.’ But Robert never wanted to be a substitute goalkeeper anywhere, ever again.

  Jupp Heynckes said he had been ‘ruled by his head’.

  Nine months after that phone call with Ferguson, in La Villa, a Portuguese beach restaurant in Est
oril offering Japanese cuisine and a view of the sea, Robert said, ‘Perhaps I made a mistake before this season.’ He left the sentence floating in the room like a story-teller enjoying the breathlessness of his audience. He meant declining the offer from Manchester. ‘When I see Barthez playing rather unhappily these days …’ He didn’t finish the sentence. A moment later he seemed to be talking not to Teresa and me, but to himself. ‘What’s past is past. Now I have to make the right decision about where to go now.’

  It was the day we first met.

  He’d sprinted up to me through the reception area of the Estádio da Luz, still wearing Benfica’s burgundy training sweater, and shook my hand. I was just thinking that professional footballers didn’t usually come storming along to interviews like that when he then ran right past me and out of the stadium. ‘Unbelievable!’ he called out to me. ‘They gave my pay cheque to another player! I’ll be right back, but first I have to make sure that I get my money.’ Two hours later, over sushi and green tea in La Villa, he still hadn’t got his money back, but he was able to laugh about the mistake. Somebody in Benfica’s office hadn’t been concentrating and had handed Robert’s cheque to the first blond who came along, the Swedish midfielder Anders Andersson. He had put the envelope in his pocket and driven home. ‘It’s nice that even some people here don’t recognise me,’ Robert joked, ‘but does it have to be the man in the office who hands out the cheques? If you see a little Swede with black sunglasses and a big suitcase on your flight home, stop him for me: that’s Anders Andersson, taking my money abroad.’

  This lunch left me with the impression of a twenty-four-year-old man who reflected on things and was completely uncynical, who felt at home in a foreign city and thought he knew exactly what a happy life was. The strongest image I was left with, however, was that of a professional sportsman inspired by the idea that he has to climb ever further, ever higher.

  After lunch we went for a walk on the beach. We talked into the wind.

  ‘It was worth switching to Benfica. Spending three years as a regular goalkeeper with such a big club at my age – who gets a chance like that? But that’s enough now.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’ve been here for two and a half years, and already I’m a senior member of the team. I’ve seen so many team-mates that I can’t remember them all, they change so often here. That’s not a way to produce a winning team. This year I’m even the team captain, and of course that’s great. But if you’re honest, you also have to say to yourself, a foreigner as captain at the age of twenty-four? That only shows that they’ve sold all the other leading players – it only shows that there’s something wrong with the club.’

  A man out for a stroll stopped in front of us. At first I took him for a flasher, with his big coat and flailing arms. Then it became clear that he was trying to imitate Benfica’s goalkeeper making a save.

  I laughed. Robert made a point of looking straight past him.

  ‘I’ve got a goalkeeping coach here, he’s driving me round the bend. I have trouble staying in form with his training.’

  At first I thought, where’s this coming from? Then Robert told me about Samir Shaker, his new goalkeeping coach at Benfica, and I understood: the flailing man in the big coat had reminded him of Shaker.

  Benfica’s goalkeepers had thought that their previous mentor, Walter Junghans, had everything a goalkeeping coach needed, and a bit more. ‘Once he kicked apart one of the plastic chairs on the terrace behind the goal,’ says Moreira. ‘He had the hardest kick of all the goalkeeping coaches in my career.’ But after two years Junghans had been persuaded to leave, in that special way that Benfica had: all of a sudden his salary was distinctly lower than agreed.

  A little while later they were introduced to a beaming white-haired man. Samir Shaker came from Iraq. No one knew how he had come to Portugal; how he had been able to start a career in the country as a goalkeeping coach at Nacional Funchal was no easier to understand. ‘Samir spoke no English and about three words of Portuguese,’ Moreira reveals. ‘Amigo – bola – vamos!’ Friend – ball – come on! ‘He was a very sweet, nice man,’ Moreira adds.

  ‘Come on, friends!’ Samir Shaker called, demonstrating the warm-up exercise for Robert’s benefit. He was doing somersaults.

  Somersaults!

  ‘Friends!’ Samir Shaker called, and showed them the next exercise. One goalkeeper was to stand with his legs spread and his back bent, the other keeper was to run up and somersault over his colleague’s back. ‘Come on!’

  ‘Moreira, tell me this isn’t true,’ Robert said.

  Moreira laughed and shrugged.

  At the next training session Samir Shaker tied the goalkeepers to the goalposts with elastic bands. They were to push off against the resistance of the rubber band.

  ‘Samir, that’s dangerous. When we finish the exercise it’ll hurl us right back against the goalpost.’

  The next time Samir Shaker tied foam mats around the posts.

  In the week before the game against Maritimo in Madeira he put a bucket of water on the ground next to him and dipped the ball into it before every shot at goal.

  ‘What’s that’s supposed to achieve?’

  ‘Chuva,’ said Shaker. Rain. It rained a lot in Madeira. That was what he was preparing them for.

  ‘Aha,’ said Robert. ‘In that case wouldn’t it be better to put the whole penalty area under water?’

  Samir Shaker smiled. He hadn’t understood Robert.

  That Saturday night Robert and Moreira had their usual conference in the hotel bedroom.

  ‘I can’t believe it. He’s a nice guy, but he’s not a goalkeeping coach. The club’s got to sack him.’

  ‘Robert, I have a positive way of looking at it: we can learn new things from him.’

  ‘But I’m not working in a circus.’

  ‘First we had a German goalkeeping school under Walter, and now we’ve got an Iraqi one with Samir.’

  ‘And have you ever seen a good Iraqi goalkeeper?’

  For more than two years Moreira had known Robert as a highly professional sportsman, but also as a cordial, reasonable person. He couldn’t imagine the new trainer’s quirky methods really putting too much of a strain on him. So when he saw Robert getting angry about Shaker at the training sessions, Moreira thought, Robert’s just putting on that rage to keep from bursting out laughing. He doesn’t want to be rude and laugh at Samir, so he’s pretending to be angry.

  Teresa knew better. After he had let in three goals against SC Beira Mar and Benfica failed to win the next two games as well, she saw him entrenching himself in front of the television and brooding.

  Under this new trainer his form was draining away.

  Nothing, not even the truth, could make Robert shake off the thought. In fact, in that third year at Benfica the outlines of a perfect goalkeeper were beginning to emerge. Since his arrival from Mönchengladbach his body had changed completely: his arms and legs were slowly starting to match his imposing shoulder axis, his reactions were swift and his jump powerful. He was tending to catch crosses now instead of punching them away. When an opponent advanced from midfield he stood waiting a full eight yards in front of the goal and did not retreat into his own six-yard box, which meant his opponent had only a small amount of scope for through-balls. His trained instinct for understanding what was about to happen on the pitch was growing sharper with every game. But, stressed out as he was by Samir Shaker and Benfica’s persistently mediocre performances, Robert could no longer draw strength from these improvements.

  Teresa was resolved not to yield to the changing moods of a football-player. He had to learn not to let defeats or Samir Shaker silence his laughter.

  ‘Why were you playing for your opponents?’ she quipped when a clearance of his landed at the feet of the opposition.

  ‘Do you know your saves off by heart yet?’ she asked when he lay slumped on the sofa the evening after a game, until the last sports broadcast devoting itself to rep
eating his imposing feats in slow-motion had finished.

  ‘Did you see my cool save?’

  ‘Well, I’ve heard the commentators shouting Uenk! Uenk! at least twenty-seven times all over the house for the last hour.’

  ‘But you’re a footballer’s wife. Read A Bola.’

  People who were only acquainted with the Enkes were often startled by the rather harsh tone they sometimes used with each other. Teresa simply says, ‘We loved teasing each other.’

  In the afternoons, walking the dogs on the beach, their ideas about the future began to take shape.

  ‘I’d really like to go back to the Bundesliga,’ he often said.

  ‘And somehow,’ Teresa says eight years later on a different walk, up the Lange Berg in Empede, ‘we managed to convince ourselves that we had to get back to Germany. Even I thought it was the best thing, because it meant I would be close to my friends again.’

  The first offer came in January 2002, six months before the end of his contract with Benfica. Robert got a shock: FC Porto wanted him.

  There are a few things a professional footballer can’t do; switching from FC Barcelona to Real Madrid, from Celtic to Rangers or from Benfica to FC Porto are among them. The traditional feuding of these clubs represents one of the last remaining opportunities in civilised Europe for people to live out their hatred. And plainly hundreds of thousands of people still sometimes feel the need to hate. In football derbies, clichés aren’t ludicrous, they’re welcome, as a way of stirring up rivalries. ‘Porto works, Lisbon squanders the money’ they say in northern Portugal.

  ‘I’m a Benficista, I can’t go to Porto,’ said Robert.

  Even when there’s a total of ten million euros on the table for three years, after tax?

  Jorge Pinto da Costa loved tormenting Benfica players with irresistible offers. Educated at a Jesuit school, the FC Porto president had ruled the club like the lord of the manor for twenty years. When he split up with his girlfriend, she wrote a book in which she claimed Pinto da Costa spent his money on ladies’ jewellery, beating up rivals and bribing referees, but the president was able to repudiate the allegations as ‘seriously false’.