The return of the calm conductor: Sarah Zadrazil ready for next step at Estádio da Luz

José Barcala had to make do without her for 348 days. Of all people, the very player who brings order to the football pitch where others still see chaos. She organises, makes adjustments, directs play and sends out the right signals before a match starts to lose its rhythm. For almost a year now, she herself has had to live with the lack of clarity: with waiting, uncertainty and a football pitch that, at first, lay just behind an invisible pane of glass.

Now Sarah Zadrazil is back following her cruciate ligament tear. Not with a bang, but just as she approaches every game: step by step, pass by pass. Freiburg, Köln, the Champions League – every minute over the past few weeks has been another building block on the long road to recovery. On Wednesday evening, her journey with the Munich women takes her back to Lisbon, to face Benfica – the very opponents against whom Bayern experienced an evening in 2022 that defied all expectations. But to get to this point, the Austrian has come a long way.

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A player who dictates the rhythm of the game

At Bayern, Zadrazil has never been the one who inevitably takes centre stage. She is more the quiet lynchpin around whom so much revolves. Her work is most valuable where it goes largely unnoticed: when she plugs a gap or neutralises an opposition attack. Others make the headlines; Zadrazil often provides the punctuation. So with her, it's not just the return of an experienced player. It's also the return of a certain order: the organisation and maintenance of the team’s balance. The Austrian is the metronome that senses the rhythm of a match before it picks up pace. During her rehab, she had to direct this ability, somewhat unusually, towards herself. Her own comeback, too, required structure, a plan and patience.

“I came back from rehab fitter than I’d ever been before,” she says. A year without games or tackles, and yet she returned in a physical condition that surprised even her. She was out for a long time, but she never stopped training. Only her knee occasionally reminds her, every now and then, of what lies behind her. It can still feel a bit stiff at times, or swell up a little, she explains. But she has no pain, nor is she restricted in any way. “It’s not an issue at all anymore.” Her knee is fully functional again.

A year in which football became a privilege

These days, she talks about football differently than she did before her injury. Before she tore her cruciate ligament, it had been her familiar daily routine for years – after all, she’d never been out of action for any length of time. Training, matches, recovery, travelling. A tightly scheduled cycle that left little room to reflect on just how special this life actually is. Then suddenly she was sidelined. Her rehab began at around eight in the morning and ended in the afternoon.

“Performance, performance, performance” had long been her mindset, she explains. Always pushing, always improving, always striving for that extra one per cent. During her rehab, her perspective shifted. “Now I try to put the whole thing into a slightly different context and just be much more grateful that I can play at all.” Because during her rehab, for the first time in a long while, she found herself on the outside of the football bubble rather than right in the middle of it. And it was precisely from that distance that she realised how much she missed it. “This year has also shown me that all I ever want to do is play football. That’s what fulfils me.”

It was tough at the start. And at the end too.

Her recovery wasn’t always plain sailing. “It was tough at the start. And at the end too,” she says. “The bit in between was very smooth for me.” At the start, there was the dependence – those first few weeks when even simple things suddenly became obstacles. Right at the end came the impatience. Her mind had long since reached the finish line, but her body carried on doing its own thing. It doesn’t have a switch you can simply flick. Nor does it have a calendar that’s swayed by lofty goals.

Zadrazil had to learn not only to train her body, but also to manage her expectations of it. “You can only really understand it once you’ve been through it yourself,” says the 33-year-old. The experiences of teammates such as Giulia Gwinn and Lena Oberdorf were a great help. That’s also why she stayed in close contact with the team throughout her rehab. So her eventual return was not a matter of a single moment for her, but a journey made up of many steps: the first training session, the first few minutes against Freiburg - ironically, against the very same opponents against whom she’d torn her cruciate ligament back then. “It was rather bizarre and a remarkable coincidence that it turned out to be this particular game. Looking back, though, it’s also nice to be able to say: I’ve now got that one game – the one that perhaps gives you a little more food for thought – out of the way."

Back in the thick of the action

On Wednesday, her next step takes her to Lisbon – to Benfica and the Estádio da Luz. That cathedral of European football where the men’s team won the Champions League in 2020. It'll be a tough night for the Munich women. That's not only down to Benfica’s quality, but also to the memories of their last meeting in the 2022/23 season.

🔍 Benfica opposition analysis:

Back then, Bayern were trailing 2–0. Maxi Rall pulled one back late on, Georgia Stanway equalised, and in the eighth minute of stoppage time she even scored to make it 3–2. In the meantime, Lina Magull had had to go off injured following a collision, whilst Mala Grohs saved a penalty. It was a game full of twists and turns, with tempers flaring, and a closing stage in which nobody knew quite what would happen next. “It was just wild,” says Zadrazil, looking back. “There were sparks flying in that match – from start to finish.” Now it’s time for the rematch.

Zadrazil knows what Bayern can expect. She says Benfica are “technically very adept and really good on the ball”, as well as “very aggressive in the tackle”. The task will be all the more complicated as a result. It will require 90 minutes of concentration and, in all likelihood, a bit of mental fortitude once again. Bayern showed against Man City that they can play at the very highest level for long periods. Now it’s a matter of maintaining that quality even when a match gets uncomfortable, the opposition pile on the pressure and a controlled night suddenly turns into a frantic one again. Perhaps that's why Lisbon is the perfect setting for Zadrazil’s next chapter. She, the one who normally brings order to a game, has had to learn over the past year that not everything can be arranged neatly. That a recovery doesn’t go any faster just because you want to get back sooner. And that football isn’t always about forcing the next move, but about making it at the right moment.

The Bayern women showed heaps of resilience in a tough cup tie in Mönchengladbach on Sunday:

🎟️ Get your tickets for FC Bayern Women vs. Real Madrid here! You can apply for tickets for the match against Barcelona here!