Dortmund soccer professional Emre Can spoke publicly about his tumor for the first time. "I had a tumor in the thyroid gland and needed an urgent operation. The thyroid gland had to come out. That changed a lot in my life," said the 29-year-old professional to the DAZN streaming service. The intervention was four years ago: "You can tell you can have so much money, you can have everything, but health is the most important thing."

Fortunately, it was never life-threatening for him, he had no after-effects. Since the operation, however, he has had to take pills every morning for the rest of his life to compensate for the lack of thyroid hormones. And he has regular check-ups.

He used to be bored by things like that, "but that's part of life. I advise everyone to do that, no matter how healthy they are. If you identify such things in time, you can act. It was time for me and I'm for it Extremely grateful to the doctors."

The tumor near the vocal cords was discovered during the medical checkup when he moved to Juventus Turin in 2018. "One or two months" after the examination, his advisor called him several times and said he had to go to the doctor. "I didn't even know what was going on. I didn't know anything about it, I've never heard of a thyroid and didn't know that there could be a tumor," said the native of Frankfurt.

He is grateful to Juve "that they found out. The change was worth it for that alone." Can moved from Liverpool to Turin in 2018 before joining BVB in 2020.