Mattia Caldara retired at 31: "My body betrayed me"

The’former Milan and Atalanta defender Mattia Caldara said goodbye to soccer at the age of 31 in a long letter posted on social media: “A blank sheet of paper, a pen. I close my eyes, I throw out the air. I open them again, the time has come. Dear soccer, I say goodbye. I have decided to quit. No, it was not easy to decide. Neither is writing these words. ‘Dear soccer, I bid you farewell’. I keep re-reading them. Maybe it is a way to accept it. Accept it a little more. Now I have found some peace of mind. But it took me a while to make this decision”.

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“It all came about in July after a visit to a specialist: ‘Mattia you no longer have cartilage in your ankle. If you continue in a few years we will have to put a prosthesis on you’. My body had betrayed me. This time, perhaps, permanently”.

Caldara in his long letter talked about his career, in which he wore the jerseys of Atalanta, Milan, Trapani, Cesena, Venezia, Spezia and Modena. In rossonero the first serious injury: “It was my big chance. In those colors were enclosed my hopes. October, a training session like many others. I was running, suddenly a sensation I had never felt before, as if someone had shot me on the tendon. I thought someone had stepped on my ankle. I had turned to look: there was no one there. I remember Maldini’s face as I was on the crib. I could read the displeasure on his face: I had understood everything”.

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Then the new injuries: “I could no longer walk down the street with my head held high. I would look in the mirror and not recognize myself. Lightness and lightheartedness were no longer part of me. And when you experience such situations, you don”t hurt only yourself, but also the people close to you”.

“I have convinced myself. ‘What do I go on to do?’. I was in that situation despite running much less than I would have in a retreat with a team. ‘What is the point of it all? ’. It was time to say enough. Enough of playing soccer and, above all, enough of the suffering and emptiness that had accompanied me for years. Years in which I hid from myself. I took back my life. I am regaining what I lost. Although, sometimes, losing oneself serves”.