A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke (10 page)

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 G
ü
nter 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?’

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.

Six years later Robert raised his right hand to greet the fans in Mönchengladbach at Uwe Kamps’s testimonial. The mood was solemnly relaxed – an idol was leaving. A lot of fans whistled at Robert’s friendly wave. After that he didn’t care whether his friends noticed anything. After six years he released his fury over his treatment by the fans. ‘It always rains in
M
önchengladbach,’ was his curt reply whenever Marco wanted to talk about Borussia again.

‘Of course the hostility in Mönchengladbach was deep in his bones,’ says Jörg Neblung. ‘Here was a man who had been radically misunderstood. He thought he was being fair to the club by saying in good time, “I’m leaving at the end of the season, I’ll give you enough time to find a successor.” He wanted to do the right thing, and all he got in return was hatred.’

The contract with Benfica was still to be signed. On the plane to Lisbon he sat with a Portuguese language book in his lap and cobbled together his first sentence in the foreign language.

É bom estar aquí
.

He wanted to surprise the reporters with that at his presentation.

It’s good to be here.

The signing of the contract was planned for the afternoon of 4 June, immediately after his arrival; the official presentation would be carried out the next day at a press conference in the Stadium of Light.

A car was waiting for them at the Aeroporto da Portela. Jörg Neblung wore a light summer suit like Pierce Brosnan in
The Tailor of Panama
. Flippi had said, you do it, and had stayed at home. Robert had chosen a blue shirt with a grey suit, no tie – he was a sportsman, after all. When they set off from the underground car park, Teresa noticed a photographer hiding behind a pillar.

‘Look over there,’ she said, too surprised to think.

Robert turned his head, and a flash blinded him. He looked furiously at Teresa, as if she’d pressed the button.

‘Sorry, how should I know a paparazzo would be lying in wait for us?’

They reached the office of Benfica’s president João Vale e Azevedo. Friendly, nervous words were exchanged, then Robert was sitting on a chair with a velvet cushion, the contract in front of him.

He turned around. ‘Shall I sign?’

Teresa swallowed. She looked him in the eye and tried to sound relaxed. ‘Sign it.’

Hands were shaken. Vale e Azevedo’s was fleshy. In profile, the president’s face looked like that of a youthful intellectual; from the front, with the gleam of his high forehead and his laughing eyes, he looked like a local politician trying a bit too hard to appear clever.

They stepped outside the door, where the photographers were already waiting. Vale e Azevedo put his arm around Robert, the photographers flashed away, and the next morning the picture was on the front page of the sports newspaper the
Record
. ‘Enke signs’ read the headline in capital letters.

In the picture Robert looks happy.

An hour after the signing Robert, Teresa and Jörg returned to their hotel rooms on the Praça Marques da Pombal for a quick rest. Jörg was lying on his bed in his summer suit, his arms folded behind his head, when there was a knock at the door. It was Teresa.

‘Jörg, Robbi’s not staying in Lisbon.’

JÖRG DIDN’T MOVE
. He lay motionless on the bed, pillows piled all around him, silver and bronze with a pattern of flowers. As always in high-class hotels there were far too many pillows: Jörg never knew what to do with them. He slowly processed the words he had just heard.

‘What do you mean Robbi isn’t staying in Lisbon?’

‘He wants to go back straight away.’

Jörg sat up. He hid his confusion with a smile. His silence challenged Teresa to tell him about that far-off world into which Robert had suddenly plunged after the signing of the contract.

Outside the president’s office, immediately after the signing of the contract, Robert hears Teresa saying, ‘Let’s go to the Expo site and do a spot of shopping.’