The life of a professional footballer is supposed to be all roses. Paid for kicking a ball around a field, often quite handsomely, travelling to all corners of the globe and, if you’re lucky, pulling the adoration of thousands of fans.
Yet even footballers can get stuck in a career rut.
For Ben Halloran, even after the emotional high of playing in the 2014 World Cup, job satisfaction at Fortuna Düsseldorf was a struggle to obtain last season. And he is not afraid to take responsibility.
“I felt jaded coming back [from Brazil],” Halloran explains.
“My heart wasn’t really in it, and I was a bit slow coming back.”
Modern-day footballers can be tiresome beasts at times. Heavily PR-trained, schooled in the art of a cliche and refined in the ability to dodge a tough question, the highly paid sportsman can dish out some unappealing soundbites when faced with a journalist and their pen.
Halloran, thankfully, is a refreshing exception. No bullshit is an apt description. He is more than willing to open up about a season that was a frustrating plateau in his promising career.
It resulted in the speedy winger missing out on Ange Postecoglou’s Asian Cup squad, a disappointment that added to his woes of working at a club which failed to reinvigorate his love for the game.
“The second half of the season was just catastrophic for myself, and for the team as a whole,” Halloran says.
“Three games [following the Winterpause] our coach got sacked, then the second team coach [Taskin Aksoy] came in for the last 15 games and that was just a disaster for the whole team.”
A promising start to the season, which had seen Fortuna in the mix for promotion, plummeted dramatically. Halloran only started one match under Aksoy.
“I didn’t see eye to eye with him and he didn’t want to play me. It was a two-way street. To be fair I wasn’t really interested. I kind of levelled with the fact that I wouldn’t be playing so I didn’t care as much. I was just looking for the finish line to be honest.”
The jaded feeling had failed to evaporate, club upheaval contributing to an already disengaged outlook. Yet the Germans have a saying: “Hopfen und malz ist noch nicht verloren” or “hops and malt are not lost yet”.
Trust the Germans to use beer ingredients as a way to communicate that everything will turn out fine.
Halloran’s drive has returned, the hunger for pitch time renewed after an off-season of reflection. It has resulted in the 23-year-old seeking an escape from the city lights of Düsseldorf, finding a new haven in the tiny town of Heidenheim.
The Queensland local could not have picked a more contrasting city to rekindle his career progression.
“It’s a bit of a culture shock going from the Gold Coast to Brisbane to Düsseldorf to there,” Halloran laughs.
“But I was getting in a bit of a comfort zone. [Düsseldorf] is unbelievable so I think even when I wasn’t playing I was so content with my life that it didn’t really bother me. But everything about Heidenheim seemed like a good fit.”
Heidenheim are a new entity in German football. The club was promoted to the 2.Bundesliga for the first time in its history for the 2014-15 season and managed an eighth-placed finish. It was a significant achievement for a club that had only escaped semi-professional status in 2009.
Their ground, Voith-Arena, holds little more than 15,000 people, the city itself only boasting a population of barely 50,000. It is a pretty town, located north-west of Munich in Baden-Württemberg, the picturesque 12th century Hellenstein Castle towering above the inhabitants.
Halloran is the only foreigner at the club, giving him an opportunity to vastly improve his German, which can be difficult in bigger cities. The team prides itself on strong morale and team spirit and for much of last season it were these fighting qualities that pushed them to a top half finish.
This campaign is a new test for Heidenheim. The landscape of second division football in Germany is largely unpredictable; any team can legitimately make a push for promotion if they string together a few early results.
Last season FC Ingolstadt and SV Darmstadt achieved automatic promotion, while Karlsruher SC were unfortunate to miss out after a devastating play-off loss against Hamburg. None of those three teams would have featured in pre-season promotion predictions. Darmstadt had been touted for relegation.
This season only RB Leipzig, backed by the millions of Red Bull, can be considered clear favourites for a jump to the top tier.
“We haven’t really spoken about our ambitions as a whole,” Halloran says, “but you can tell it’s an ambitious club. They’ve made some pretty good signings in the off-season and it’s a good, young coach. From what I’ve seen from him it’s all been positive and that’s the number one thing for me.
“I think once you start talking about promotion it gets a bit risky. But I think with the team we have and the coach we’ve got we can really do something this season.
“Last season Ingolstadt and Darmstadt got the automatic promotion spots and you can definitely see the similarities between those clubs and Heidenheim.”
For Halloran, just being at a club where he once again harbours the confidence of his coach and which evokes a feeling of content is a relief. Stability and Düsseldorf do not exactly feature in the same sentence too often in Germany’s media.
“In the two years I was in Düsseldorf I think there were six trainer changes, three technical directors, two presidents and I think only a handful of players are still left from when I first arrived. There was a massive turnover every six months.
“With Heidenheim it’s a much more stable club. It’s a little smaller, of course, but the coach has been there since 2002.”
Frank Schmidt played more than 100 hundred games for Heidenheimer SB, a traditional German sports club which FC Heidenheim broke away from in 2007. Schmidt was soon elevated to replace inaugural coach Dieter Märkle and has steered Heidenheim towards relevancy in German football.
It seems like the perfect environment to match Halloran’s relaxed persona and the club’s philosophy and direction fit within his own mindset and ambition to play attractive football.
“The coach insists on playing good football, but he also wants a no risk approach,” Halloran says.
“So if you’re in the defensive third it’s just no risk, put your head down and clear the ball. In the centre, though, he wants his players to play 50/50, with a bit of risk, and up front, it’s 100 per cent. It’s a pretty simple concept.
“He wants to play attacking football. He doesn’t want us to be one of these teams where it’s a small club in the second league and we just fight and play on the counter attack. That’s not the goal of the club.
“We want to try and win every game, and that shows the ambition and philosophy of the club.”
Heidenheim will be without last season’s hero goalscorer Florian Niederlechner, who secured a move to Bundesliga side FSV Mainz, and Halloran, along with fellow new signing Daniel Frahn, will be expected to inject something new into the attack.
Heidenheim host last season’s relegation escape artists 1860 Munich in the season opener on Sunday, a big test against one of German football’s sleeping giants. Getting game time is imperative for Halloran after a season spending too much time on the sidelines, and the Socceroos are also on his list.
“That’s another big reason for the move,” Halloran says.
“It was disappointing for sure [missing out on the Asian Cup] and I still feel I could have added something to the squad.
“But I need more game time and it’s nice to have a coach that has confidence in me. As far as I know with Ange and his philosophy is that as long as I’m playing regularly I’ll get a look in.
“[Heidenheim’s] a new challenge for me, it will be nice to finally get things underway.”
Again, to borrow from the colourful German language, “Rosigere Zeiten brechen an” – better times are ahead. Hopefully it all comes up roses for Halloran this season.
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