Farewell, Meise!

By: Anna | May 17th, 2008

34_vfb-bielefeld_348×348_11.jpg When it comes to players taking their leave from the Bundesliga, this season all the focus is, understandably, on Oliver Kahn. His goodbye-tour through the stadiums of the league was watched with great interest and the public attention will take a while to ebb away.

But there are other players leaving. They may not have won as many titles, they may not have played as many games, maybe they’ve never made such an impact in the national team, but they will also be missed by their fans. There is Leverkusen’s Carsten Ramelow, there is Dortmund’s Christian Wörns, there’s Rostock’s Stefan Beinlich or Stuttgart’s Silvio Meißner.

After eight years of playing for the VfB, after exactly 250 matches in the Bundesliga, Silvio Meißner is retiring from professional football.

In the last years he hasn’t exactly played much. When the young wild ones were winning the title, he was lent out to the 1. FC Kaiserslautern.

But this man is part of the club’s history. He was there with the first generation of “Junge Wilde”, when they reached an almost impossible second place in the league. He was there in the Champions League, when they beat Manchester United, a match that still is one of the biggest triumphs in the club’s history.

And the fans know that: His popularity isn’t any less than that of Khedira, Hitzlsperger or Meira. And even though he hasn’t played one single match from the beginning last season, the jersey with the number seven has by far not disappeared from the stadium’s tribunes.

That Bielefeld was the opponent Stuttgart had to face when he said his goodbye is a wonderful irony: His last match for Bielefeld took place in the Gottlieb-Daimler-Stadion, the last match of the 1999/2000 season.

His perspectives for the future: “It’s going to be a huge change to live without football. Here’s to hoping that I won’t immediately put on a few pounds, like some former colleagues of mine.” Well, Horst Heldt for example may join the running in training camp once in a while, but it can’t be ignored that he’s become a little, well, chubby.

Now Meißner is going to join a player agency and finish studying sports management. The club and his fans wish him the best of luck.

This blog-entry is not based on my knowledge, but on today’s stadium magazine and a few things found on the internet. I don’t know that much about Meise and I never saw him play live.
But he is one of those players of whom you just know they matter. You don’t need to see them play in their best time to understand what they mean to their club and the fans. And so, though I don’t know him as much as some other players from the squad, I’m also going to miss him.

Farewell, Meise. Take care. And if you watch your nutrition a little, you shouldn’t have to worry about the weight, either.