Caldara: Former Atalanta and Milan defender announces retirement at 31

Former Milan and Atalanta defender Mattia Caldara has officially announced that he will be retiring from professional football at the age of 31 after a long struggle with serious injuries and a major battle with his mental health. 

Caldara made 199 competitive appearances across his career, a large chunk of which came at Atalanta. 

He had been purchased by Juventus for an initial fee of €15m in January 2017, before being loaned back to Atalanta, and then eventually sold to Milan for a fee of €35m as part of a deal that saw Leonardo Bonucci move back to Juventus for a similar fee. 

The two-time Italy international has confirmed in a long, open letter that he has been forced into an early retirement as a result of the injuries that he suffered across his career. He says that he was warned by a specialist in July that he had no cartilage in his ankle, and that he might require a prosthetic foot if he attempted to continue playing. 

“Dear football, I bid you farewell, I have decided to call it a day,” Caldara wrote in an open letter published on Saturday. 

“It wasn’t an easy decision to make. Neither is it writing this. I keep re-reading these words. Maybe it’s a way of accepting it a little more.

”I’ve found some peace now, but it took me a while to make this decision. It all started in July after a visit to a specialist: ‘Mattia, you no longer have any cartilage in your ankle. If you continue, we’ll have to put a prosthetic on you in a few years’ time’. My body has betrayed me. This time, maybe definitively.” 

Caldara has also spoken openly about his battles with his mental health as a result of the serious injuries that he suffered throughout his career. 

“Mental illness isn’t easy to explain in words. Until you experience it, you don’t know about its appearance or its effects. It’s invisible, but can crush you. You don’t always see it from the outside, you only see the consequences. And in this deafening silence, it slowly changes you, it clouds your thoughts, it creates a bubble where you’re locked up and become sort of a prisoner. That’s how it was for me.” 

He continued: “I couldn’t walk down the street with my head held high anymore. I looked at myself in the mirror and didn’t recognise myself. The light and lightheartedness were no longer inside me. And when you go through something like that, you don’t just hurt yourself, but also those close to you.

“That’s what happened to me. For months, maybe years, I was focused on myself. I created my own world, my own bubble about myself, my needs, my problems. My wife and parents were afraid to ask how I was for fear of my reaction. That wasn’t me.” 

Caldara explained that he had still hoped to find a new club over the summer, having most recently turned out for Modena in Serie B.

“I continued to train, I was recovering from an adductor problem. I trained until the end of August aiming to prepare for the new season. Inside me, I hoped that call would still come. I kept running through the pain.

“At the end of August, I had testosterone injections. (The doctors told me): ‘Mattia, the needle isn’t getting through, there’s no space between your tibia and foot. You decide, but if you continue like this, I’ll have to put a prosthetic on you’. At that moment, I decided. I was convinced.

“It was time to say enough, enough of football and, more importantly, enough of the suffering and emptiness that had followed me for years.”