#3 Michael Ballack
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It would seem harsh to call someone who has had so much success and won 5 league titles “cursed”, but Michael Ballack has had some truly atrocious luck over the years.
Ballack joined Bayer Leverkusen in 1999, and his team fought it out toe-to-toe with Bayern Munich for the league title. With the race boiling down to the last day and Leverkusen on 73 points to Bayern’s 70, a draw was all that was needed to guarantee them the league title. Ballack however, netted an owl goal and they went on to lose 2-0. With Bayern winning, a superior goal difference meant that the title went to Bavaria.
Two years later, redemption seemed at hand. Leverkusen were fighting it out for the Bundesliga, the cup and were in the finals of the Champions League, in what was to be an unprecedented treble for a German club.
They lost out on the league to Dortmund on the final day, the cup to Schalke and lost the Champions league to Real Madrid, with Zidane’s spectacular volley the highlight of that particular match.
To cap it all off, Ballack reached the finals of the FIFA World Cup with Germany that summer, but ended up on the losing side again, with Brazil running out 2-0 winners.
Since then, Ballack has definitely seen better days, but that horrendous run of finals will probably see him go down as one of the unluckiest footballers of all time.
