Sébastian Haller will have to park football for the next few months to fight against a testicular tumor. The Borussia Dortmund striker (28 years old), recently signed from Ajax, will have good references to look at to overcome an illness that other footballers have previously emerged victorious from.
The blow for the Ivorian is especially hard, as he was at his best after signing a great season last year, when he scored 34 goals with the ajacied, 11 of them in the Champions League. In addition, Haller arrived at the German club as the great bet for the tip of the attack after the departure of Erling Haaland.
However, the African only needs to look at the cases of other players who have gone through a situation similar to his to see that in a few months he can return to his best form on the pitch. These are the best-known players who have overcome testicular cancer:
He was just 20 years old and had just signed for Chelsea in the summer of 2004 when the speedy winger put his promising career on hold to cure testicular cancer. Despite knowing about his ailment, Robben donned the shirt of the Dutch national team to play the European Championship that was held in Portugal.
"I was very scared. Living without football being the most important thing was difficult. The wait was terrible. I didn't know what was going to happen to me," the Dutchman told the club blue magazine months later. Robben played his first game for Chelsea on 23 October against Blackburn Rovers. It was the beginning of a career full of successes, first with the Stamford Bridge team, then with Real Madrid and especially in his 10 years with Bayern Munich. He retired in 2021 at the age of 36 at Groningen, the same team where he made his elite debut at the age of 16.
On October 14, 2002, the veteran goalkeeper, at that time 32 years old, announced that he was temporarily leaving Deportivo de la Coruña to fight against testicular cancer. Barely three months later he returned to being under the three goalposts of the Galician team, with whom he played another three seasons before playing one last year with Levante.
Molina, champion of the League and Cup with Atlético de Madrid (1995-96) and of the Cup with the A Coruña team (2002), kept the title in goal after overcoming the illness. He is currently the sports director of the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF).
The Basque central defender had a tumor detected in his right testicle on December 23, 2016, at the age of 21 and a few months after making his debut with the Athletic first team. On February 4, 2017, on World Cancer Day, he put on his boots again to play against Barça at the Camp Nou, but at the end of that same season, on June 12, he relapsed.
After receiving chemotherapy treatment, he returned to play with the Bilbao team on February 4, 2018 against Girona, again on World Cancer Day. Since then, Yeray has established himself as the axis of Athletic's defense and is currently the undisputed starter, forming a partnership with Iñigo Martínez.
The 'greyhound' began to feel discomfort after a clash with Bacary Sagna and in October 2013, when he was 30 years old, they detected a tumor in his left testicle. After being treated in Argentina, he returned to England in November, but Newcastle invited him to find a team despite the fact that before the illness he was a starter.
"When they told me I had cancer, I went home crying," explained the Argentine forward, who left on loan to Norwich shortly before undergoing chemotherapy treatment for the appearance of some lymph nodes. Finally, the former Mallorca player returned to play with the 'magpies' in March 2015 and in his last game with Newcastle he scored the goal that prevented the team from relegation. He later played in Defense and Justice of Argentina.
On February 15, 1994, the Bulgarian striker, 28 years old at the time, had to leave the discipline of Valencia to overcome cancer in the testicles. The doctors of the team that detected the tumor thanks to a painful shot that the player received during a game, which was ultimately essential to stop the disease in time.
Penev missed the remainder of the season and was unable to play in the World Cup in the United States, where Bulgaria finished in a creditable fourth position. Ten months later, on October 23, 1994, he returned to play for Valencia in a match against Deportivo de la Coruña. His career continued the following year at Atlético, where he won the double, and later spells with Compostela, Celta and CSKA Sofia before retiring.
Carlos Ángel Roa became known in Spain for his great performance with Mallorca, where Zamora was in the 1998-99 season. After four seasons with the vermilion, the Argentine goalkeeper, known as 'the lettuce' for his vegan diet, went to Albacete, where his career was stopped due to testicular cancer.
"It was very hard because one does not prepare for that. It was to battle back against something complicated and difficult (...) They opened my entire belly to remove the three tumors that I had," said the goalkeeper at the time who before suffering the cancer in June 2004, at the age of 34, he had already overcome the malaria he contracted in a concentration with Argentina. After his experience at Albacete, of which he criticized the lack of support from his managers, he returned to the pitch a year later with the Argentine Olimpo Club, where he hung up his gloves.
The name of the Galician goalkeeper began to make headlines with Tenerife and his good performance with the island team and later with Getafe earned him a jump in his career by signing with Atlético de Madrid, where he spent a year before leaving. to Elche, just before cancer stopped him.
"With cancer I learned to fight, to be realistic, to discover that I was nobody," said the man from Pontevedra, who successfully battled a tumor twice, first in August 2005 and then during the following season, when he was a member with the Hercules. He continued his career in various teams until in 2018 he retired at the age of 41.
