Michael Ballack Biography

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.

Ballack is 6' 2 ½" (189 cm) tall and weighs 179 lbs (80 kg). He and his girlfriend Simone have three children - Louis, Emilio and Jordi.

He will play in central midfield for Chelsea in the English Premier League following his departure from Bayern Munich and for Germany, which he has captained since 2004. Ballack was transferred to Bayern Munich from Bayer Leverkusen on 1 July 2002, for an undisclosed amount. Before that, he played for Kaiserslautern. On 15 May 2006 he announced that he had joined Chelsea on a Bosman at a press conference in London.
***

***
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 also has a first class free-kick-taking ability which in many cases has been proven unbeatable for international keepers. 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.

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 4 October 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 - FC Karl-Marx-Stadt, later to become Chemnitzer FC.

The young hopeful who moved to FC Karl-Marx-Stadt 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 the 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 4 August 1995, on the first day of the new Second Bundesliga season. But Chemnitzer lost the 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 26 March 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 Chemnitzer to bounce straight back. He didn't miss a game and scored ten goals for the "Sky Blues". It wasn't enough for Chemnitzer 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.

On the back of his strong performances for Chemnitzer FC and Germany's U21 side, Michael Ballack was lured to Rhineland-Palatinate's (Rheinland-Pfalz) premier club, 1. FC 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 1997/98 season, away to Karlsruher SC, 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 28 March 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 1 July 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).

It was at Bayer 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 attacking midfielder in front of Carsten Ramelow-the holding player, and was the man who pulled the strings in the centre of the pitch, making late runs into the opponents penalty box and also the reliable finisher upfront. In his three seasons at the BayArena, he scored 27 goals in the league and a further nine in Europe.

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.

However, 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 2002 World Cup). 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.

After joining Bayern Munich 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 Kaiserslautern.

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

In four seasons at Bayern, Ballack won three Bundesliga and German Cup doubles and scored 47 goals in 135 matches. Between 1998 and 2005, Ballack had notched up 61 goals in his domestic league. However, Ballack was criticized for constantly choking in important UEFA Champions League matches as well as regularly looking for a big international move instead of proclaiming loyalty to Bayern. He drew heavy flak from Franz Beckenbauer and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, and during his final match for Bayern, he was jeered throughout the stadium by Bayerns' supporters.

Ballack agreed to join Chelsea on a Bosman transfer on 15 May 2006. During his last season as a Bayern player there were rumours of interest from Manchester United, Real Madrid and AC Milan, but Ballack instead chose to go to Stamford Bridge on a lucrative three-year-deal.

After debates in the media as to whether Ballack and Frank Lampard could play together in the same team, Chelsea manager José Mourinho confirmed that he was not worried about the players' compatibility.

Ballack's world class qualities were mentioned by Jose Mourinho. The Chelsea boss has said of Ballack regarding the players qualities "For me he's one of the best players in the world, He's very intelligent, tactically very strong and he scores a lot of goals. For me in Europe there's only Frank Lampard who plays at that level. The two would form a dream pair.

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 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 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. He wears the famous number 13 jersey of Germany which was previously worn by Gerd Müller and Franz Beckenbauer.

In the 2006 FIFA World Cup he was unable to start in Germany's first game against Costa Rica due to a calf strain, but will be playing in Germany's other matches.

MICHAEL BALLACK PICTURES

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8

MICHAEL BALLACK BIOGRAPHY