Niklas Sule, 30, has a Champions League title, two World Cups and five Bundesliga titles. He also has two cruciate ligament tears that made him hang up his boots in 2026.
The hardest part was not the injuries, it was the pressure over his weight. “At Bayern Munich, there was a weigh-in every Thursday”, he said. To make weight, he fasted all day Wednesday and went into the sauna wearing a coat.
On Sunday, August 16, he made his debut for SV Tiefenbach, an amateur club in Germany’s ninth division, where two of his best friends play.
They lost 7-2 to SG Kirchardt, but he scored a header in front of around 500 people. No weigh-ins, no sauna, no cameras. Just football.