Free A Life Too Short: The Tragedy of Robert Enke by Ronald Reng Page A

played, although without noticing the connection. A decade later, when he was with Hannover 96, he took the Reiss profile test that is supposed to establish a player’s personality and motivation. He had never thought that recognition was so fundamentally important to him, he remarked with amazement to Teresa as he held the results in his hands. But even in Mönchengladbach she had been struck by the fact that ‘if he felt that other people doubted him, he developed self-doubts, and when he was put under pressure by others, he became insecure. But when he received support, he was incredibly strong as a goalkeeper.’
    In Hamburg, once again, Borussia were 2–0 down after half an hour. Hamburg’s striker Anthony Yeboah was in the zone – that place where movement happens at an incredible pace, with a higher level of coordination – and he was half a step faster than his Mönchengladbach marker Thomas Eichin. Robert was left stranded and Yeboah’s shot flew in, between his legs. Such shots are unstoppable – when a goalkeeper has to stand with his legs spread, waiting to dive towards either side, he can’t snap his legs shut like that. But a nutmeg always makes a goalkeeper look ridiculous; after an impossible task he lands clumsily on his backside. The only thing he can rely on is the mockery of the fans. When he got back to his feet, rage was pounding through Robert. He felt abandoned, humiliated; it had been Eichin’s mistake, and now people were laughing at him. He wanted to start yelling. But he thought a goalkeeper who lost his composure was lost himself. He wrestled with his fury, and he was helped by the knowledge that so many people had praised his serenity. He was the cool guy, so he would stay cool. Seconds after Yeboah’s goal the agitation had left his face.
    Over the weeks that followed he learned how to turn off the internal film that constantly tried to tell him all about the most recent goals and crosses. In the evenings he and Teresa often went to see Grandma Frida in Rheydt – the fourth grandma in his life. The old farmer’s wife had had her farm converted into rented apartments, and Jörg Neblung lived there with his girlfriend Dörthe. The four of them sat together talking easily about God and the world. It was only when a football match was shown on television that he got up to watch it.
    Jörg would sit on the sofa next to him. Whenever Jörg perkily commented on some aspect of the game, Robert would reply concisely and analytically. After that he’d fall silent again. When he watched football on television he became withdrawn, studying his colleagues with great concentration, a goalkeeping engineer in search of the mechanisms of the game – on the one hand. On the other, football on television was a most effective anaesthetic. Watching football helped him to forget about playing football.
    Sometimes the others wanted to do something else.
    ‘We could always go out,’ Teresa said.
    ‘But we could always stay at home,’ he countered.
    How often had they had that exchange?
    But when they visited Dörthe and Jörg, Robert had three people against him, and he went along with it. When they played Bon Jovi at the disco, he even danced. But he didn’t want to go out all the time so he soon developed tactics.
    ‘Come on, let’s go to the Gebläsehalle,’ said Jörg one evening.
    ‘Can’t,’ said Robert, trying to keep the triumph off his face.
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Stupidly, I’m wearing tracksuit trousers. The doorman won’t let me in.’
    Jörg was supposed to be looking after him. ‘Can’t you do something about that boy? He has no social circle,’ Norbert Pflipsen had said to Jörg during Robert’s second year with Mönchengladbach, when Jörg was still the team’s athletics coach. ‘Worrying’ can also be a job, Jörg learned when Borussia declined to extend his contract in the summer of 1998. Flippi took him on as a ‘worrier’, or K ü mmerer – the slang name given to