Champions League Winner Niklas Sule Retires At 30 After Injuries

Duesseldorf: Champions League winner and five-time Bundesliga champion Niklas Sule has announced his retirement at the age of 30 after an injury scare led him to reconsider his future.

The Borussia Dortmund and Germany defender is leaving football at the end of the season, when his contract at the club was already due to expire.

"I'm very, very clear about my decision," Sule said on the Spielmacher podcast in an episode released Thursday. "Despite that, football has given me a huge amount and I had such a great, cool time that there's pain in saying this."

Sule has missed 22 games with various injuries this season and said a moment of clarity came after he hurt his knee in a game against Hoffenheim last month.

Sule said he "cried for 10 minutes" in the showers after the club doctor examined his knee and shook his head, leaving Sule to fear he'd sustained a third career ACL tear, meaning months of recovery.

The injury turned out not to be that severe but Sule said it left him considering the health impact of continuing to play football and how injury rehab would affect his ability to play with his children.

Sule also discussed struggles managing his weight throughout his career and being perceived as lacking fitness. At one stage, he said, he resorted to fasting and wearing a raincoat in the sauna to sweat out water and be lighter for weekly weighing sessions.

Sule won the Champions League with Bayern Munich in 2020 and the German title five times before a move to Dortmund in 2022. Sule narrowly missed out on another title when Dortmund lost the Bundesliga title to Bayern in the final minutes of the 2022-23 season.

He reached the Champions League final with Dortmund the following year, losing to Real Madrid, but achieving a memorable moment with his goal-line clearance to deny Kylian Mbappe a goal for Paris Saint-Germain in the semifinals. Sule has played 49 times for Germany, including at two World Cups, but not since 2023.