Niklas Süle, the former Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund defender, has opened up on Alison Bender’s After The Final Whistle podcast about the years-long process that led him to retire at the end of the 2025-26 Bundesliga season.
His mother, he says, had put it bluntly: “I don’t think you’re compatible with this industry.”
He pushed back and asked her what she meant. The answer did not satisfy him at the time, but the verdict stayed with him, and in the months that followed he began to accept that she might be right.
The panic attack on the way to training
Süle has described one moment when his mother’s reading got harder to argue with. He was behind the wheel on his way to Dortmund’s training ground when he first felt something was wrong.
Read also: Barcelona stand to pocket €10m from an Everton move for Vitor Roque they won’t have to negotiate
“I was driving to the training centre, felt a bit panicky and thought: Hey, something isn’t right. I had a panic attack,” he said on the podcast.
He has spoken of being in a darker place through his final two years at Dortmund and of working on himself, including seeking help from a Buddhist monk. On the podcast he framed the panic attack as confirmation of a direction he had already suspected for years, well before anything happened on the Hoffenheim turf.
The Hoffenheim scare was not the trigger
Süle’s last visible setback came in the 42nd minute of Dortmund’s 2-1 defeat at Hoffenheim on 18 April 2026, when he slipped reaching for a clearance at the PreZero Arena and clutched his left knee. He was substituted at half-time, and Dortmund managing director Lars Ricken initially spoke of a suspected serious injury.
Süle, who had already suffered two anterior cruciate ligament tears during his career, feared a third. Scans the following day cleared him. On the podcast he insisted the scare was not what ended his career; he had already decided.
Read also: Ralf Schumacher: new champion Antonelli would run circles around Hamilton and Leclerc
Süle announced his retirement on 7 May 2026, leaving the game at 30 with 49 Germany caps, the 2017 Confederations Cup, and a Bayern Munich medal haul that includes one Champions League and five Bundesliga titles. He told the podcast he had known for three or four years that he was going to stop, and that football was not his life.
