Former Liverpool defender reveals how downward spiral ended Anfield career

Markus Babbel, the former Germany international who was a fixture in Gérard Houllier’s treble-winning Liverpool side of 2001, has revealed how his Anfield career was ended by a downward spiral in his personal life after he recovered from serious illness.

Babbel, now 52, joined Liverpool on a free transfer from Bayern Munich in the summer of 2000, adding quality and composure at right-back as the club won the League Cup, FA Cup and UEFA Cup in addition to qualifying for the Champions League.

The dynamic Bavarian played 60 games that season, but early in the next campaign it became clear something was very wrong. Spent and unable to breathe, he was withdrawn at half-time in a league match against Bolton Wanderers and subsequently diagnosed with Epstein-Barr, the virus that causes glandular fever.

Sidelined for weeks, Babbel eventually returned to training but experienced a gradual loss of sensation in his lower legs. Tests revealed he was suffering from Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare peripheral nerve disorder that can spread throughout the body, potentially causing paralysis or even death.

No longer the same player

By December, Babbel was confined to a wheelchair at a hospital in Munich. A shadow of his former self, the player who had patrolled Liverpool’s right flank with such distinction had lost two stone, and would only gradually recover the ability to walk, let alone play football.

Play again he did, though, coming on as a late substitute in a Community Shield defeat to Arsenal the following August. It was a remarkable show of resilience but, understandably, Babbel was no longer the same player.

He struggled along for a few months but would play his last game a week before Christmas, when he was substituted before half-time in a League Cup win at Aston Villa, removing his shirt in disgust as he traipsed off the pitch. 

Further displays of frustration followed when he was twice dismissed in reserve matches. The second of those incidents, a headbutt on an Everton player, prompted the late Houllier to issue a fine of two weeks wages and announce the German was no longer part of his plans. Babbel acknowledges it was a fair decision, but says there were mitigating circumstances that extended beyond his extended period of ill-health.

‘I was drinking a lot, I wasn’t professional any more’

“After this illness, I wasn’t the same person any more,” said the German, who went on to spend a season on loan at Blackburn before returning to Germany. “It was a bad period. 

“I had the luck to get past the bad illness, but I wasn’t the same person as before, because I got divorced. My wife left England, my kids left England, so I was alone there and something happened in my head.

“I wasn’t normal any more, I went out a lot, I was drinking a lot. I wasn’t professional any more. My lifestyle didn’t fix to a professional footballer. And that was the reason why I had to leave this club.

“I had more friends in Germany. My family is in Germany. So that was [a] much easier [way] to come back to the normal Markus than [when] I was in this time after my illness in England.”

Babbel, who admitted in an interview with the Liverpool Echo that he regretted his behaviour, would later patch things up with Houllier at a charity match held to mark the 25th anniversary of Hillsborough. 

But Liverpool fans, like Babbel himself, can only wonder what might have been had he been available for selection in his second season at the club.

Houllier famously declared towards the end of that campaign that Liverpool were “10 games from greatness” – only to see his side finish second in the league behind Arsenal, and eliminated by Bayer Leverkusen in the last eight of the Champions League.

“I sometimes think, if this illness [had] come a year later, that I could have played a second year for Liverpool,” said Babbel. “But it happened, and to be fair, after this illness, I wasn’t the same person as before.”