Michael Walkeron a player who Franz Beckenbauer accepts 'of all who have been compared to me, Ballack is closest'

IF BLUE is the colour of Michael Ballack's fabulous world, it was not always. Ballack grew up in red days and when he arrives in Moscow next week part of him will be back in the USSR.

Change is a pattern of Ballack's life on and off a football pitch: when he was born in 1976 in a small town in the German Democratic Republic, it was into a Soviet country and system that reviled the sort of millionaire payments and hedonistic lifestyle that Chelsea and the English Premier League represent today.

If asked in Moscow to talk about the contrasts of his times, Ballack will be able to, because as well as German and English, Ballack speaks Russian. The town near Leipzig in which Ballack grew up, Chemnitz, was then called Karl-Marx-Stadt.

"I pronounced the first sentences of our get-to-know-you conversation in Pushkin's language, but we then switched to Shakespeare's language," is how Ballack recently described his first encounter with Andrei Shevchenko at Stamford Bridge. "I must admit it is easier for me this way [in English]. Yet I am sure if I need Russian one day I will find myself in no difficulty to recall my knowledge. I spent eight years learning it at school."

Given he was 13 when the Berlin Wall fell, Ballack learned Russian from the age of five and there must be days when he drives away from Chelsea's bronzed training ground in leafy Surrey thinking that Leonid Brezhnev and Yuri Andropov - not forgetting Erich Honecker - feel like names from lifetimes ago rather than his youth.

Katarina Witt is another, she and Ballack went to the same sports college. Ballack confirmed this week he continues to pay the salary of his first physiotherapist in Chemnitz. "Yes," he said, "it's just a token of my appreciation and a question of decency. I was 13 years old when the wall broke down. It's a mistake to think the political system of the GDR played an important role for me in my education or in my football club. I had a happy childhood. Your country doesn't educate you, it's your parents.

"Together with my partner I try to educate the children in the same way, how we were educated - with love and warmth. And one important thing they have to learn is that money alone doesn't make you happy. Also, the political system they are living in isn't decisive or important."

The political system Ballack knew has undergone a new Russian revolution. That is why Uefa are able to stage the European Cup final in Moscow and why Chelsea are one of the participants: but for Roman Abramovich's hundreds of millions Chelsea would not be going and, but for Abramovich, Ballack, Shevchenko and the rest would not be at Stamford Bridge. The anti-Chelski multitude can blame Boris Yeltsin. It was he who indulged Abramovich.

It took a while to filter through, but football changed like everything else in Europe in 1989, though Ballack, in a town not far from Berlin, was among the first to feel the shockwaves. The end of the Wall meant movement, physical as much as emotional, and Ballack left for what everybody still thought of as Western Europe. It was 1997 and the destination was Kaiserslautern. Ballack was 20. His career was about to lift off. With Bayer Leverkusen, Bayern Munich, Germany and now Chelsea it has taken him from Glasgow to Seoul, back to Berlin and off to Moscow. He has won German footballer of the year three times and yet Ballack knows as much about losing as winning.

There was the yellow card in the World Cup semi-final in South Korea in 2002 that deprived Ballack of a final in Japan against Brazil - and Germany of their best player - which came 10 weeks after Leverkusen failed to take advantage of Real Madrid's hesitation at Hampden Park and lost 2-1 in the Champions League final. That same season Leverkusen lost the Bundesliga on the final day and the German Cup final. But in getting to Glasgow with a small club, Ballack scored important goals along the way: two against Liverpool in the quarter-final and one at Old Trafford in the first leg of the semi.

Then in that semi-final in Seoul, a la Roy Keane against Juventus in '99, Ballack was booked early and knew he would miss the final. But he took the fight to South Korea and with 15 minutes left scored the only goal.

In Berlin two summers ago, discussing Ballack with a reporter from Cologne who covers Leverkusen, we were informed passionately: "What people need to appreciate about Ballack is that he is not a dictator. He is not a midfielder like Roy Keane and he is not a creator like Zidane. Ballack is a man of moments. And he can score goals."

In Germany, the selflessness of the display in Seoul was taken as confirmation of his status. Ever since Ballack departed Chemnitz he had been the latest to be compared with Franz Beckenbauer but now even Der Kaiser accepted "of all who have been compared to me, Ballack is closest."

The straight back, head-up style helps but it was a more industrial, head-down sort of footballer who has been credited with the change in Ballack: Rudi Voller. A Leverkusen player, too, Voller was personally close to Ballack, so much so Ballack adopted Voller's number 13 shirt, a number he has not yet relinquished. As Ulrich Hesse- Lichtenberger wrote in his Tor! The Story of German Football: "Voller, with his close ties to Leverkusen, had also concluded that Michael Ballack was not the underachieving loafer most people made him out to be, but the cornerstone of his new side. It was another example of Germany suddenly taking notice of what went on in modern football."

And modern is how Ballack has come to be seen. He is 6ft 2in, and strong, he is also mobile and operates in a role that is half-midfield, half-attack. At Chelsea there are those who argue his moments have not come frequently enough, yet his first season was ended prematurely by an injury that extended into this. That meant his season did not start until December but he has had 29 games since and has scored nine goals, including the two that beat Manchester United at Stamford Bridge three weeks ago. The first was a characteristically good header, another followed at St James' Park to take the title race to its last afternoon.

If those were Ballack moments to be applauded there were others that roused the vitriol of opposing fans. Sometimes petulant and with a willingness to hit the floor, Ballack can infuriate. That straight back also leads to accusations of arrogance.

Does he care? As he sits beside Shevchenko on the team bus next Wednesday, Ballack will have other thoughts. "I am 31 now and I want the responsibility to go to a final," he said. "I lost the first one. Six years ago we were the underdog. In the end we outplayed Real and lost 2-1. We defeated ourselves in that match. You are rarely rewarded in this sport, and sometimes you are brutally punished."

Michael Ballack Facts

Born: Gorlitz, East Germany, September 26th, 1976.

Height: 6ft 2½ins (1.89 metres).

Club career

1995-1997: Chemnitzer (15 appearances, 0 goals)

1997-1999: Kaiserslautern (46, 4)

1999-2002: Bayer Leverkusen (79, 27)

2002-2006: Bayern Munich (107, 44)

2006-: Chelsea (44, 11)

International career

1999-: Germany (79, 35)

Honours

Bundesliga titles: 1998, 2003, 2005, 2006.

German Cup; 2003, 2005, 2006.

English FA Cup: 2007.

English League Cup: 2007.

Champions League runner-up: 2002

World Cup runner-up: 2002.

World Cup third place: 2006.