PROFILE: Robert Enke: The quiet goalkeeper

By John Bagratuni Nov 10, 2009, 20:36 GMT

Hamburg - Robert Enke, who committed suicide on Tuesday at the age of 32, seemed to overcome all hardship in his life when he was between the posts of a football goal.

The captain of Bundesliga club Hanover 96 showed his class for the last time on Sunday with several spectacular saves in a 2-2 Bundesliga draw with SV Hamburg.

It was only Enke's second game after a mysterious bacterial infection had sidelined him for nine weeks and possibly dented his dream of being Germany's number one goalkeeper at next year's World Cup.

Germany coach Joachim Loew said it was too early to call up Enke for the upcoming friendlies against Chile and Wales. Loew also said that Enke was still in the running for the World Cup job.

But while the team gathered in Bonn to train for the two games, Enke died at a railway crossing near Hanover when he was run over by a train.

Enke's advisor Joerg Neblung confirmed on Tuesday night to Germany Press Agency dpa that Enke's death was suicide. Hanover president Martin Kind said in a first reaction that Enke was 'unstable.'

It was only three years ago that Enke and his wife Theresa lost their two-year-old daughter Lara, who had been born with a heart defect. They also have an eight-months-old daughter they adopted in May.

'He was one of the thoughtful and quiet football professionals - long before Robert Enke and his wife lost their daughter,' said the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung in an editorial made available Tuesday night.

'We will not know whether this drove him to his death. Maybe we will never know what happened within Robert Enke on this night.'

Enke's career was rocky as well and he was not a goalkeeper of the glamorous and sometimes controversial sort such as Oliver Kahn or Jens Lehmann.

Born in then East Germany in Jena, Enke made his Bundesliga debut for Borussia Moenchengladbach where he played from 1996 to 1999. He moved on to Portugal's Benfica Lisbon for three years and then to Barcelona, where he didn't manage a breakthrough and was loaned off to Fenerbahce Istanbul and Tenerife.

His national team career was also far from normal. Called up for the first time for the 1999 Confederations Cup (without playing), Enke had to wait seven years before being selected again.

The breakthrough came only last year when he was number two behind Lehmann at Euro 2008 and then a top contender for the number one when Lehmann retired after the tournament.

Enke won eight caps, six of them during the 2008/09 season as he fought Rene Adler, Manuel Neuer and Tim Wiese for the first choice privilege.

He was designated to be between the posts in the crucial October qualifier in Russia, but the infection prevented him from playing and Adler was splendid in Germany's 1-0 win to qualify for the South Africa finals.

It was the latest setback as Enke had also failed to underline his ambition for number one last year when he broke his left hand before the first match with Russia and was out of action for two months.

Now Enke, for reasons currently unknown, decided to put an end to his life.

Germany Olympic Committee general secretary Michael Vesper spoke of a tragedy, national team manager Oliver Bierhoff was 'lost for words' and German football supremo Theo Zwanziger said the whole football community was 'deeply distressed and full of mourning.'

Enke's website was taken down and the Hanover website was jammed while the club's fans gathered at the Hanover stadium to mourn.

'He has gone through so much and always got on his feet again. I can not believe it,' said one fan, Stefan Busse.

Hanover players were lost for words while fans lit candles for Enke whom they named a 'cult figure' at the northern German club.