A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke (21 page)

The floodlights were still on; the walls of the ground, with their crumbling whitewash, gleamed. Some of the sportswriters sat on the ground in the gym, which had been converted into a press conference room.

‘The old vices were visible again, above all the inexplicable hole in the defence opened up by de Boer and Reiziger in which they buried themselves and Enke in his debut game,’ wrote
El Mundo Deportivo
.

‘Enke signed his own sentence,’ the
Sport
decided.

Frank de Boer, who had been asked to speak for the team as Barça’s captain that evening, appeared on the basketball court beside the ground, where the reporters were waiting. He was a veteran of over four hundred top-flight club games and a hundred for his country. ‘That first goal didn’t make Michael Reiziger look good,’ he said, ‘but Enke should have come out to take the cross, because he was almost level with the ball.’ With regard to Novelda’s winning goal, when de Boer had stood beside Madrigal and done nothing, de Boer simply said, ‘Enke has to catch the ball.’

It is an unwritten law in professional football: never criticise your team-mates in public.

At Alicante airport the footballers of FC Barcelona waited for their charter plane to take off, each man an island, with no desire to speak and even less of a craving to hear anything. Excited sports journalists were spreading the news. De Boer’s behaviour had been incredible, unprecedented; he was the worst of all and he attacks his team-mates, and he does it as the captain? No one dared tell Robert.

It was after one in the morning when he opened his front door in Sant Cugat. He went to the bathroom to wash his gloves with shampoo and lay them carefully out to dry, as he always did.

In Novelda, on the Avenida de Elche, Toni Madrigal sat at the kitchen table with his two flatmates Miguel Angel Mullor, who had set up two goals for him, and Toni Martínez, who couldn’t play because of a knee injury – at this of
all
times. ‘It was late when we got back from the stadium, after eleven, and there aren’t many restaurants open in Novelda at that time of night,’ says Madrigal, so they ordered a pizza at home to celebrate.

The next morning Robert walked into the changing-room in Camp Nou on time for training, with a feeling that he would rather be somewhere else. As always, breakfast had been prepared for the players. If some of them voluntarily sat down for a cappuccino and some fruit and croissants every morning, they were more likely to become a team. Robert ignored the food, and sat down next to the Swede Patrick Andersson, a fellow player of his at Borussia Mönchengladbach. Sitting next to Patrik, talking in German, felt like being home again.

‘Did you see what de Boer said about you?’ hissed Andersson, who competed with de Boer for a place in defence. ‘You can’t put up with that, you’ve got to fire back!’

Robert, too impotent to feel furious, went to see de Boer out of a sense of duty towards Andersson. He quietly asked him what was going on.

He’d been misquoted – you know journalists, replied de Boer.

Robert said nothing more. He thought it wasn’t seemly to row with your team-mates. And above all he didn’t want anything more to do with de Boer. He just wanted to be on his own.

Luis Enrique, the real captain of Barcelona who, like some of the other senior players, had been rested in Novelda, gave de Boer a good talking-to. Coach van Gaal roared at his fellow Dutchman: a professional didn’t behave like that, certainly not one with his experience.

No one paid any attention to Robert. Why would they have? He was a professional, he should be able to get on with things. Van Gaal didn’t talk to him; ‘he didn’t talk to me all year’. No one defended him against the headlines: ‘Where was Enke?’ ‘The German goalkeeper has demonstrated that he’s too green for Barça’.

‘He was thrown to the lions,’ says Victor Valdés.

Robert and Frank de Boer had to go to the press conference. Robert said, ‘I’ve never criticised another player in my life and I’m not going to do it now. The whole team lost.’ De Boer said he hadn’t intended to criticise anyone, he’d just wanted to explain the goals. ‘Enke could have done more to prevent these goals, and me too. I failed over the third goal, but I think I played well.’

‘There was one thing I wanted to ask,’ Victor Valdés says to me eight years later. ‘Did de Boer ever apologise to Robert?’

Never.

A curious noise comes out of Victor’s mouth. Is it a gurgle, is it laughter? Is it surprise, is it contempt?

Robert didn’t read the newspapers on 12 September. But he did find out what was in them. A professional footballer senses the vibrations of public opinion. Some acquaintance on the phone, some fan at the training-ground, always says, did you see what they wrote about you? In a world where people’s destinies are routinely reduced to knee-jerk headlines, all of a sudden he was the goalkeeper who had failed.

He felt numb and at the same time profoundly torn up.

Teresa wrote in her diary – still the Portuguese one, still the same year when she had punctuated her notes with so many euphoric exclamation marks:

12.09: The game made big waves. The press is in full chase, spurred on by attacks from Frank de Arse. Both nervous wrecks
.

13.09: Somehow got through the day. Still completely whacked
.

For a few days Toni Madrigal read about what his three goals against Barcelona had started. But he had never bought the sports papers and he soon lost interest in the daily tittle-tattle of the elite of professional football. For most people he will always be the man who knocked Barça out of the cup. He
never
watched the game on video. ‘Why should I watch a football match when I know the outcome?’

He’s thirty-four now, his hair all silver-grey. Given that he works in professional football, the job that gives you premature wrinkles, he has a surprisingly smooth, youthful face. He wears his trainers with their laces untied, his khaki shirt hangs casually out of his jeans. He looks very slight for a striker. He is sitting at a pavement café in Elche, where he now lives. There are palm-trees in the plaza. He orders his coffee extra strong.

Since eight that morning he’s been studying at home – he’s training to be a fitness coach. He’s always enjoyed studying. Professional footballers are so lucky to have so much time to study, he feels. Madrigal’s career has taken him to teams like Levante B, Sabadell and Villajoyosa, all Segunda B, but now he’s back with FC Novelda, who have slipped down to the Tercera División. ‘There were rumours that after my three goals against Barça, Elche, in the Segunda División A, wanted me.’ He smiles. ‘There are always rumours in football.’

Toni Madrigal doesn’t believe that one game can transform a football career. But, he adds, thinking about Robert Enke, one evening can mark a life.

HE WOULD HAVE
loved to destroy his career. The idea became increasingly intense, increasingly enticing: what if I just stopped going to training? Tore up my contract, said goodbye, and gave up football?

But what would he do then? At twenty-five he couldn’t just start studying – and what subject would he choose? When he had read the book
100 Jobs with a Future
six years earlier in Mönchengladbach, there was no other profession that had grabbed him. When reporters had asked him during his youth-team days what job he wanted to do if football didn’t work out, he had answered, ‘Sports journalism.’ But now he couldn’t be a football reporter either. It would only mean facing up to his failure.

‘It was just a game that went wrong. Everyone else on the team was bad. And Valdés has missed the ball a few times too.’

‘That’s different. The coaches love Victor. I just had that one chance. And I blew it.’

‘But you’re brilliant as a goalkeeper. Sooner or later things will work out. I firmly believe in you.’

‘It’s over, Terri. There’s no point any more. What I really want to do is tell Parera to tear up my contract.’

Teresa felt he wouldn’t do that. But she was still startled. His sadness sounded so definitive.

They were sitting by the pool in their garden, and didn’t feel like jumping in. The defeat at Novelda was four days old.

For the other players, everyday life had returned. Just the day before, Barça had won a league game in Bilbao 2–0, with
Vald
és in goal and Frank de Boer in central defence. On the way home van Gaal sat in a traffic-jam in the Garraf Tunnel – ‘two and a half hours’, he said – and the drivers of the other cars gave him the thumbs up. FC Novelda had scored their first point of the season thanks to a 2–2 draw in Palamós, with a goal from Madrigal. Robert alone was left behind. A week later, at the derby with Espanyol Barcelona, he wasn’t on the Barça teamsheet.

During those hours of brooding with Teresa he had stuck his feet in the pool and caught a cold.

‘Slept late, dogs too,’ Teresa wrote in her diary. ‘Robbi has depression again.’ Today, after having accompanied him through two clinical depressions, she would rather have written: He was in a dark mood again.

The rescue parties arrived. Jörg Neblung hurried to Barcelona; later Dirk Enke did the same. Marco called, and Robert’s mother with her unshakeable optimism. Why couldn’t he be like her? When Jörg arrived in Sant Cugat, Teresa was ill as well. She had caught the infection from him.

‘There was a big difference in Robert’s relationship with me and Marco,’ says Jörg ‘With Marco, it was simple friendship. But I was also his adviser. So there were conflicts. We often rubbed each other up the wrong way, and there were times when I was overbearing.’

‘Go to training,’ said Jörg. You can also publicly hit back at de Boer, Jörg added when Robert got back from the training-ground.

Robert said, ‘What would be the point of that?’ He didn’t like conflict, and he wanted to be reminded of Novelda even less. ‘I simply felt run down. I was so preoccupied with myself that I’d closed myself off to the world.’

Neither Jörg nor Teresa had had any psychological training. They only had their common sense.

Sad people should get busy and cheer up, they thought.

From the Enkes’ bedroom you could see Sant Cugat golf course. ‘Come on, let’s play golf,’ said Jörg.

‘Golf?’ Robert looked at him as if he’d just been invited to fly to the moon.

They weren’t sure if they always chose the correct iron from their borrowed golfing bag, and judging by the sceptical looks from the other golfers they were making fools of themselves. So much the better. Jörg didn’t have to force himself to be funny, the comedy was there already.

15. Robert with his agent and friend Jörg Neblung
.

They also went with Teresa to the riding-stables. Dickens was jumping and running around again now; the gleam had returned to his coat, and, she thought, to his eyes. But for half an hour the horse reverted one last time to its terrible old state, with a swaying freight on its back. Robert sat on Dickens like a robot. When he got off, he laughed quite freely.

When people who knew him are asked how they remember him, most of them say without thinking, like the national goalkeeping coach Andreas Köpke, ‘How he laughed.’

Minutes later Robert’s eyes again had the flat, glassy look of someone who’s not really there.

‘You’ve got to go and see a psychologist,’ was Jörg’s parting shot before he flew back to Cologne.

He found a German specialist in Barcelona, Dr Heinrich Geldschläger, a certified psychologist and psychotherapist.

‘Go,’ said Jörg.

The practice was in Eixample, where the modernist buildings highlight Barcelona’s old beauty, and the masses of cars turn the city into a modern hell. Dr Geldschläger told Robert he’d been thinking about him. After he’d heard about Novelda.

With his steady gaze, his moustache and his combed-back black hair, Geldschläger looked a bit like the England goalkeeper David Seaman, who was at that time developing a reputation for unreliability.

The doctor diagnosed alienation, a deep melancholy of a kind many people experience after a bereavement, after being fired from a job, or after being bullied. They had to try to work through the panic situations Robert had experienced in football. And perhaps some Jacobson muscle relaxation would help, said Geldschläger, because muscle tension often went hand in hand with psychological tension. Robert watched as the doctor showed him the exercises. Clench your fist for five seconds with your eyes closed, then quickly open the fist and concentrate on the change in tension …

Robert was sceptical, but he continued to go regularly to Dr Geldschläger for weeks. He didn’t dare not to. He felt he had to do something.

When his father came to Barcelona, Robert took him to training. FC Barcelona trained at a football ground most local players would have complained about, distinctly narrower and shorter than the usual size. They couldn’t practise corners there. The ground, La Masía, was Barça’s trademark. This team didn’t need to train for corners.

After the warm-up, the press had to leave the ground so that the players could work undisturbed. ‘I was allowed to stay,’ his father says proudly. He was fascinated to watch the
endless
rounds of passing. Like everyone who watches Barça for the first time, his father was overwhelmed by the feeling that he had never experienced anything like it. ‘The way they played – chop-chop, boom-boom – and still the coach was shouting away at everybody. I thought van Gaal was awful.’