When soccer players turn into gym bros

If, while scrolling through your Instagram feed, you saw a video of Mesut Özil in paramilitary garb lifting dumbbells or lifting weights, it wasn't a video created by the dreaded AI that threatens our reality. But the lithe Real Madrid and Arsenal winger has indeed transformed into a wall-thick bodybuilder, and what he's lost in elegance and speed, he's gained in reps on the weight bench.

And while this transformation took us by surprise, this kind of change is not that uncommon in footballers who have hung up their boots. In fact, in recent months we've seen some of them leave the pitch to lock themselves in impersonal gyms and lift iron weights, continuing a life of sacrifice and training. Ultimately, football players and athletes in general must combine their lives as athletes with other passions, hobbies or diversions that help them maintain the physical and mental effort their careers require.

Among the most famous bodybuilders before Özil was Tim Wiese, a former Werder Bremen goalkeeper who even made it into the WWE thanks to his physical prowess (and acting skills), where he competed against Sheamus and Antonio Cesaro - not without ending his career in the Hoffenheim jersey. Özil and Wiese shared the Bremen club's dressing room, but nobody would have thought that Özil would say goodbye to the stature that allowed him to play with immense grace and gave him enough agility to give us gems like the goal against Ludogorets.

The video - which has already gone viral - shows the athlete wearing an American Sniper-style cap and sleeve, making it seem as though Özil has fitted into the role perfectly. A similar choice to Tim Wiese was made by Stuart Tomlinson, a goalkeeper who played 146 times for British clubs such as Strafford Rangers, Port Vale, Burton Albion and many others. Tomlinson decided to train as a professional wrestler in 2013 and debuted on NXT as Hugo Knox. 

In the gym bro category, Petr Čech deserves an honorary mention as well. In his last appearances with Arsenal's shirt, the goalkeeper's physical transformation, practically at the twilight of his football career, was clearly visible. The hours spent in the gym likely served him well, as he prepared for a second career as an ice hockey player - his powerful arms helped Guildford Phoenix win the treble. Even his Chelsea teammate, the ethereal Peter Pan Fernando Torres, has now morphed into a compact hunk of muscle. The jersey El Niño wore at the Liverpool Legends Challenge a few days ago was a few sizes bigger than the one he usually wears at Anfield. Not to mention Andy Van Der Meyde, a Dutch talent who has also played for Inter Milan. He has had a career marked by a life on the fringes of legality, which led him to devote himself full-time to bodybuilding and a Larry David-like podcast after it ended.

An exception in this category is Adama Traoré, who maintains his statuesque physique in gyms across Wolverhampton, Barcelona, and continues to do so at Fulham's. Despite his muscular mass enabling him to achieve exceptional speeds, it remains a mystery why the clubs he has recently been associated with allowed him to build such a physique, considering it doesn't necessarily complement his already mediocre ball-handling skills. For him, the transition to the end of his professional career will be less traumatic than for Mesut Özil.