Emre Can is back. After a long period of suffering, the Borussia Dortmund captain has now spoken about his injury, his rehabilitation, and his hopes of winning a title.
Just over half an hour in the game against Manchester City, 90 minutes against Hamburger SV, and one thing is clear: Emre Can is back. As the middle man in the back three, he immediately stabilized the defense in both games—it wasn’t his fault that Borussia Dortmund failed to win either time. During the international break, the veteran looked back on the months since April, when he repeatedly struggled with adductor problems, in an interview with BVB club media. “It was very, very complicated,” said Can. “I had a few setbacks during my rehab: I was already very far along, and then I felt it again and had to start from scratch. And then I was ready again, and I felt it again.”
In the end, between his last start for TSG Hoffenheim at the end of April and the 90 minutes in Hamburg, there were almost six months of constant pain and a lot of work behind the scenes: “It wasn’t an easy time. It wasn’t nice, maybe the most difficult phase of my career.” But now he is “positive again.”
It started in Barcelona
The suffering began after the 4-0 defeat to FC Barcelona in the Champions League quarter-finals at the beginning of April. “That’s when I started having problems, and I had them the whole time. The coach knew that, I trained and played very little, I was almost always on the bench,” he recalls: “It would no longer have been possible to play for 90 minutes. The coach asked me if I could push through it, and for me it was clear: I’m going to do it.“
Especially since Nico Schlotterbeck was also out for a long time at that time due to his torn meniscus. ”I played through the pain until the end of the season, and after the last game I started rehab,” Can reports. He then missed the Club World Cup and the start of the new season: “I quickly realized that I wouldn’t be able to play in the US, but the plan was for me to come back after that. However, my body threw a spanner in the works and it simply took much longer than I had imagined.”
“Holding something in my hands at the end”
Now it’s time for the long-awaited comeback. “It’s not so easy to play soccer again after such a long time,” Can admits: “I felt that after the game. But now I’m feeling better again, and I was just happy to be back on the pitch. To be honest, the break came at just the right time, because I’m not yet able to play every three days. “Now he needs to ”get back into the rhythm and regain confidence in my body.“
But then the season, at the end of which his contract expires, should still be a good one. His goals: ”I want to stay healthy and for us to be successful as a team.“ Preferably with a quantifiable success: ”I hope to have something to show for it at the end.”
