Christoph Metzelder
German footballer (born 1980)
Christoph Tobias Metzelder (born 5 November 1980) is a German former professional footballer who played as a centre-back.
Most of his professional career, which was spent mostly at Borussia Dortmund, was blighted by injuries. He did manage, however, to appear 47 times for the Germany national team, representing the country at two World Cups and Euro 2008.
Metzelder also played three seasons apiece for Real Madrid and Schalke 04, amassing Bundesliga totals of 178 matches and four goals over one full decade.
Career
Borussia Dortmund
Metzelder was born in Haltern, North Rhine-Westphalia. In the summer of 2000 he signed with Borussia Dortmund from SC Preußen Münster, and he was an instant success. At the end of his first season in the Bundesliga he won his first cap for Germany, playing the second half of a 5–2 friendly win in Hungary on 15 August 2001.
The second campaign at Dortmund brought Metzelder the 2002 national title and 14 matches with Germany, all the way to the 2002 FIFA World Cup final with the latter. However, he missed the entire 2003–04 due to an Achilles tendon injury, and only took part in 16 league games in the following season.
After over two years out of the national squad, Metzelder was called by new boss Jürgen Klinsmann for a friendly with China, in October 2005.
The public source identifies “Christoph Metzelder” as german footballer (born 1980). This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Christoph, Metzelder and German.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q152984. VIAF identifies the subject as 50285929. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1980, 2008, 2000 and 2001.
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This entry incorporates text from “Christoph Metzelder” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.