{"id":655352,"date":"2026-05-07T11:05:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T11:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/655352\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T11:05:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T11:05:08","slug":"niklas-sule-borussia-dortmund-and-germany-defender-to-retire-aged-30","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/655352\/","title":{"rendered":"Niklas Sule: Borussia Dortmund and Germany defender to retire aged 30"},"content":{"rendered":"

Borussia Dortmund’s Niklas Sule has chosen to retire this summer at the age of 30.<\/p>\n

The Germany defender injured his knee in last month’s Bundesliga defeat at Hoffenheim and initially thought he had suffered a cruciate ligament tear for the third time.<\/p>\n

Although he then discovered he had avoided a cruciate ligament tear, Sule says he already felt that his career “was over” as he did not want to risk another serious injury.<\/p>\n

The ex-Bayern Munich and Hoffenheim player was set to be out of contract on 30 June and will retire after the final game of the season.<\/p>\n

After initial tests on his knee, Sule said on the Spielmacher podcast,, external<\/a> that he “went into the shower and cried for 10 minutes”.<\/p>\n

“In that moment, I really thought: ‘It’s torn’,” he added.<\/p>\n

“When I went for the MRI the next day and received the good news [that it was not a cruciate ligament tear], it was 1,000% clear to me that it was over.<\/p>\n

“I couldn’t imagine anything worse than actually looking forward to the time afterward – being independent, going on vacation, spending time with my children – but then having to process my third cruciate ligament tear.”<\/p>\n

Sule won five Bundesliga titles with Bayern Munich, as well as the Champions League in 2020, before joining Dortmund in 2022.<\/p>\n

He has made 49 appearances for Germany, playing in two World Cups and helping them win the Confederations Cup in 2017.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Borussia Dortmund’s Niklas Sule has chosen to retire this summer at the age of 30. The Germany defender…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655353,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,596,85],"class_list":["post-655352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-football","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=655352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/655352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=655352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=655352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=655352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}