Rost: "Horses teach you a lot about yourself" | OneFootball

Legendary Werder Bremen goalkeeper Frank Rost: "Working with horses teaches you a lot about yourself"

Frank Rost has more Bundesliga games under his belt than Franz Beckenbauer and was considered one of the best goalkeepers of his generation. For the past 11 years, the four-time international has been doing something completely different - breeding sport horses.

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bundesliga.com sat down for a chat with the former Werder Bremen, Schalke and Hamburg keeper to discuss what top football and top horses have in common - and what Rafael van der Vaart has to do with it all!

bundesliga.com: Frank, how is Libuda?

Frank Rost: "Libuda is doing very well. He has found a great new owner who looks after him and cares for him."

bundesliga.com: Libuda, it should perhaps be revealed, is a gelding from the Hanoverian riding horse breed that you and your wife Felicitas trained at the joint riding centre 'FF Horses'. Did you actually name him after the Schalke football legend Reinhard 'Stan' Libuda?

Rost: "You guessed right. Of course, even as a horse breeder, I can't deny my connection to football. We named another stallion Van der Vaart."

Frank Rost at Werder Bremen's recent 125th-anniversary celebrations. (IMAGO/nordphoto GmbH / Kokenge)

bundesliga.com: You've been running your riding centre for 11 years now. When did you first come into contact with horses?

Rost: "When I moved to the Lokomotive Leipzig youth training centre at the age of 13, therapeutic riding was part of our timetable. Back then in East Germany, people were very keen on so-called compensatory sports. However, I have to admit that I was a bit scared when I sat on horseback for the first time. When I moved to Werder Bremen years later, I got to know show jumpers who were also football fans. It wasn't long before I got my own horses."

bundesliga.com: Today, working with horses is probably your bread and butter.

Rost: "Since then, there have only been a few days when I haven't seen a horse. Work has become my life, and my wife and I love this life."

A five-year spell at Schalke sandwiched long stints at northern giants Werder Bremen and Hamburg. (imago sportfotodienst)

bundesliga.com: Are there parallels between equestrian sport and competitive football?

Rost: "Absolutely! Just like in football, there are many greatly talented horses who don't make it to the top in the end. You can't tell that top horses are going to reach that level as foals. Above all, this requires a great deal of stamina and robustness, both physically and mentally. Mental strength is also crucial in equestrian sport. Good horses deliver when it's demanded of them. They need the right attitude - just like in football."

bundesliga.com: You spoke about your training in the former East. When does one start training a horse?

Rost: "For the first three years, they grow up in a herd on pasture land. Then they are examined and finally, it's decided whether they should be trained as sport horses. Once they've been successfully trained, they're sold. The prices vary greatly. That another similarity to football. Sometimes one horse helps to finance the other."

Rost feels that his background as a footballer gives him the discipline needed to work with horses. (SebastianxKonopka )

bundesliga.com: What benefits Frank Rost the horse breeder today that once characterised Frank Rost the professional footballer?

Rost: "You can rely on me, despite all my weaknesses and mistakes - that has always been one of my strengths, and it also helps me in my work with animals. The discipline I was brought up with as a competitive athlete ensures that I get up early every day and give my all, even if you have to muck out the stable on a cold, wet and dark November morning. If you work with animals, you have to give it 100 percent - just like in professional football. The advantage of my current job is that working with horses teaches you a lot about yourself."

bundesliga.com: How do you mean?

Rost: "In my career, I was often hell-bent on getting my own way. That doesn't work with horses, where skills such as calmness and patience count. You can't shout at horses - you need calmer forms of communication. It was often different on the pitch. What's more, this work is a constant learning process. The first horses were domesticated almost 4,000 years ago, and every day you learn something new about these wonderful animals."

bundesliga.com: After your playing career, you were part of the Hamburg women's coaching team, and in 2013, you were managing director of the Hamburg handball team for a few weeks. Why did you retire from competitive sport?

Rost: "There were various reasons for that. I used to socialise with people like Willi Lemke, Uli Hoeneß and Rudi Assauer, people who lived for their clubs and made decisions based on that. In today's professional football, on the other hand, it seems to be more about who gets the biggest slice of the cake. Players and officials are now more employees of a company than they are people who identify with their clubs. Many things have become more interchangeable. Look at how the uniqueness of Thomas Müller's career is admired. In my day, there were far more players who stayed with just one club for so long. Today, that's very rare. That's just the way things have developed. I feel more comfortable with the horses."

bundesliga.com: What makes you happy when you work at your own riding centre?

Rost: "Some time ago, I came into the stable at lunchtime and by chance witnessed one of our pregnant mares with a foal's leg already sticking out - a life-threatening situation. Normally, horses are born at night, but this was different. I had to push the leg back and then help with the birth. Every time I see this horse today, I think about how well it has developed and that it probably would've died if I hadn't been there at that moment. The two of us have a special relationship that starts as soon as I drive into the yard. Horses are like a mirror of your actions: they show you exactly whether you're doing things right or wrong. Getting it right often and being rewarded for it makes me happy."

bundesliga.com: And in your 20 years as a footballer? What gave you satisfaction?

Rost: "As a competitive athlete, you're never completely satisfied, but it makes me proud that I was able to play with the best footballers of my generation. I played four international matches and each of them is important to me, because they are tangible proof that I was once one of the best goalkeepers in the country. And that for almost a decade. Of course, the 1999 DFB Cup final with Werder Bremen against Bayern is particularly memorable, when I first scored in the penalty shootout and then saved the decisive shot from Lothar Matthäus. Last year, I was invited to the 25th anniversary celebrations of that cup triumph, and everyone from the squad at the time was there apart from Raphael Wicky. A great squad, great lads. The last matchday of the 2006/07 season is also unforgettable for me."

bundesliga.com: You played for Schalke in the first half of that 2006/07 season, but coach Mirko Slomka replaced you with the then 20-year-old Manuel Neuer and you moved to Hamburg during the winter break.

Rost: "And Hamburg were bottom of the table at the time. In the second half of the season, we won 32 points with me in goal and qualified for the Intertoto Cup in seventh place. When I was substituted 10 minutes before the end on Matchday 34 against Alemannia Aachen, with the score at 3-0, I received a standing ovation from the crowd. For me, at that moment, it felt like I had just won the title."

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