22/07/2024
Miroslav Klose: “I stopped playing football because I no longer recognised it. Today, young players think about other things. As a child, I only thought about training and becoming someone in this sport that I always loved. At Lazio and in the national team, after each training session, I put myself in a bathtub full of ice to avoid injuries. But the young players on the team systematically refused.
When they saw me picking up the bags of balls to put them away at the end of training, they said to me 'But who tells you to do that?'.
At that moment, I said to myself: 'You're 20 years old and you can't help a 60-year-old worker?'
They care more about whether their boots go with their socks. That's why I said stop. The football I knew no longer exists.
Today's young players think first of cars, contracts with their sponsors, and their new boots. It is only after all these things that football comes. For them, their image is the most important thing. Whereas for me, all that mattered was football in its purest form.”
