Caldara’s farewell: My body let me down, time to say goodbye | OneFootball

At 31 years old, after a career marked by enthusiasm, talent, enormous expectations, and an endless sequence of injuries, Mattia Caldara has called it quits. The former Atalanta and Milan defender announced his retirement through a long and touching letter published on Gianluca Di Marzio's website.

Caldara, the farewell letter to football: “My body betrayed me. It's time to say goodbye”

A sincere, raw confession that retraces years of physical pain, psychological disorientation, and attempts at rebirth that never managed to restore what he once was.

«Dear football, I bid you farewell. I have decided to stop. No, it wasn’t easy to decide. It’s not even easy to write these words».

«My body had betrayed me»

The final decision came in the summer, after a visit that left very little room for interpretation:

«Mattia, you no longer have cartilage in your ankle. If you continue, in a few years we will have to put in a prosthesis».

A verdict. And the awareness that continuing would mean not only chasing an ever more distant dream but risking his future life.

«My body had betrayed me. This time definitively».

The day when everything changed

The letter digs back in time, reaching the moment that – he recounts – marked an irreparable fracture. Not the tendon one, but the one that followed: the knee.

Caldara remembers that instant as the end of the footballer he once was.

«A sound, a second, an instant. My soul was devastated. ‘I will never be the same again’. A chapter of my life had closed forever».

That day, he explains, the darkness began.

«I was at the highest point. Then I collapsed, first physically and then mentally»

Caldara recounts the subsequent years without filters: the continuous injuries, the struggle to return, but above all the mental burden. Painful words that touch on an increasingly central theme in the world of sports:

«I don’t know if it’s called depression. But I know what I felt. Sadness, frustration, darkness. I was no longer myself. I could no longer walk down the street with my head held high».

The malaise, he recounts, ended up affecting those around him as well.

«I was trapped in a bubble. My wife and my parents were afraid to ask me how I was. I hurt the people I loved. I didn’t realize it».

Missed opportunities and the Juventus regret

The letter also leaves room for self-criticism, especially for a choice that Caldara defines as the greatest regret of his career: leaving Juventus too soon.

«Looking back, it would have been better to stay there. I lacked mental strength. Growing up with Chiellini, Bonucci, and Barzagli would have done me good. It’s the only thing I would change if I could».

The end of the dream and personal rebirth

The decisive visit in July 2025, the futile attempts at infiltrations, the pain still present despite reduced training. And then the clarity, which came almost suddenly:

«‘What’s the point of all this?’. It was time to say enough. Enough of the suffering and the emptiness that had accompanied me for years».

Today – he writes – he has started living again.

«I feel lighter. I feel free to be myself, finally».

«Thank you, football. Even pain is useful»

The letter closes like a new beginning. Without bitterness, but with a sense of liberation.

«To football, I can only say thank you. It’s true, it made me suffer. But even pain is useful».

And then the final, symbolic image:

«I place this pen on the table. I can get up from this chair and start walking. The curtain falls. Now, Mattia is on the field».

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇮🇹 here.