Italian international footballer Mattia Caldara has announced his retirement at age 31, citing the devastating mental and physical toll of recurring injuries that derailed a once-promising career. Caldara shared an emotional message detailing years of struggle with his body and mind.
“Dear football, I say goodbye to you. I decided to stop,” Caldara wrote in a letter published on journalist Gianluca Di Marzio’s website. “It wasn’t an easy decision. It’s not even easy to write these words.”
The defender revealed the final medical diagnosis that pushed him to quit: a specialist informed him in July he had no cartilage left in his ankle. Continuing to play would necessitate a prosthesis within a few years. “My body had betrayed me. This time, perhaps, definitively,” he stated.
Caldara described years of hardship since a knee injury, which followed an Achilles tendon rupture. “I still remember the first step after the incident: I felt the ground give way beneath my foot. I collapsed. First physically, then mentally.”
He joined AC Milan in 2018 in a deal worth approximately $41 million (38 million euros). However, injuries limited him to just three appearances for the club.
“I was at the peak of my career and, in a few seconds, everything changed,” Caldara explained. “With time, I improved, but I was never well again. Never again.”
The player detailed the psychological impact, saying his pursuit of a return to form “wore me out.” He longed to be “who I had been, to be myself,” but the dream became a “utopia.”
“My expectations and those of others, the hope for something impossible, the frustration: it was too much for my head, I wasn’t prepared,” he wrote. “I wasn’t well. I was no longer myself, not even with the people I loved. I couldn’t walk down the street with my head held high.”
Caldara concluded his message reflecting on “sadness, frustration, darkness.” He added, “I don’t know if it’s called depression. But I know what I felt. I decided to let go… to regain control of my life.”
Throughout his career, Caldara also had loan spells at clubs including Atalanta, Venezia, Spezia, and Modena.