“One of the eeriest things I’ve ever seen”: How a Buddhist monk brought former Borussia Dortmund star Niklas Süle’s career to an end

Former Borussia Dortmund player Niklas Süle revealed on the podcast "After The Final Whistle" that a Buddhist monk's 50-page personality profile helped him decide to end his career, even though the monk had never met him.

After more than a decade in professional football, the centre-back wanted a life less dictated by others. "First of all, you try to find some stability in your life and, more or less, bring a different routine into the way you behave, because for 13 years you lived from week to week. You can't plan anything. If the coach says, 'Sunday is a day off,' but you lose, you might have to come to the training centre on Sunday. Your life is controlled," Süle said.

Struggling to manage his inner restlessness, the long-serving international turned to Buddhism. "You have certain habits and some things where you think: OK, this isn't helping me any more. Maybe because I've been doing it for too long, maybe because I've won everything I really wanted to win. Maybe because I've earned some money in my career. There are various reasons," Süle explained, adding: "I could no longer sort it out in my own mind. I knew I needed help. I wouldn't have thought that a form of Buddhism would help me so much. In the past, I always thought perhaps they were a bit crazy."

His first encounter with the monk unsettled him. "When I went there for the first time, he didn't know me. He had written a 50-page document about my personality — without ever having met me. It was one of the most impressive and eerie things I've ever seen," he said. "I thought that even if he'd asked someone, 'Do you know him, or can you tell me something about Niklas?', it couldn't be this crazy. I gave those pages to my wife and said: Read this and tell me I'm not crazy. Then I started doing it."

Regular meditation then became part of Süle's routine, helping him handle stress and pressure. "This form of Buddhism had an influence and helped me a great deal in my case, as did meditating, for example. Meditating before matches or after training when you have a few stressful moments. It was good for me," he said.

Süle found he needed to meditate regularly. "You have to try to do it as often as possible. If you do it once and then don't meditate for a week, it sets you back a bit," Süle explained. "That's meditation: you try to switch off your thoughts and think of nothing, because the human mind isn't designed to think of nothing. You always have thoughts in your head, and that's exactly what meditation does: it tries to cut them off."

Within a week or two of daily practice, Süle noticed a change. "I tried to do it every day. After a week or two, it got better and better. Suddenly I had feelings I'd never felt before," Süle said. "It was crazy. I'd better not talk about it, but it was crazy. I didn't know it would have such a big impact, but later it also influenced my decision to end my career."

Despite that influence, Süle said he made the decision to give up football himself: "That person in particular helped me so much. But he never said: Niklas, stop playing football. Yet the work we did together led me to make that decision."

Süle also revealed mental health problems during his time at Borussia Dortmund, before explaining his belief in karma. "This is my view of life: everything happens for a reason. I'm a big believer in karma. If I do something good, I'm more likely to get something good back than if I'm a shitty person and do bad things," he said.