Why Emre Can quit Liverpool as Dortmund captain beats cancer for Champions League final return

When Borussia Dortmund face Real Madrid in the Champions League final on Saturday night, Mats Hummels and Marco Reus will be hoping to exorcise the demons of the club’s 2013 visit to Wembley.

The pair are the only two members left from Dortmund’s last appearance in the Champions League final, when they suffered last gasp, final heartbreak at the hands of Bayern Munich when Arjen Robben scored an 89th-minute winner.

But they are not the only two players who will take to the field this weekend with vivid memories of that final.

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That’s because Emre Can will look back on that night with fond memories as he ended his only campaign as a first-team player for Bayern Munich with a Champions League winners’ medal around his neck after his side’s 2- 1 to Dortmund at Wembley. .

And this weekend will mark the third Champions League final of Can’s fascinating career, with Liverpool’s 2018 defeat to Real Madrid the second. He will head to Wembley looking to etch his name into Dortmund folklore and become only the second captain in the club’s history, after Michael Zorc in 1997, to lift the European Cup.

“It’s very different, I would say, because when I was with Bayern in the final I didn’t play, I was a young guy,” Can told CBS Sports after the semifinal win over Paris Saint-Germain earlier this month. “I was in the squad, but I didn’t play. With Liverpool I was injured a lot, I didn’t play the quarter-finals or the semi-finals.

“Now I play every game and when you play it’s different and it feels different. I’m the captain of this team and I’m very proud. If I talk too much, I get emotional.”

It’s been quite a journey for Can since leaving Bayern Munich as Champions League winners in August 2013 to join Bayer Leverkusen as he looks to earn regular minutes in the Bundesliga as a prodigy.

However, his stay in North Rhine-Westphalia was short and sweet as a breakout season with Leverkusen, in which he played in 29 of 34 Bundesliga games, earned him a move to Liverpool.

He arrived on Merseyside in a £10million deal and as part of Liverpool’s squad overhaul in the post-Luis Suarez era as manager Brendan Rodgers signed 10 new players, including Adam Lallana and Dejan Lovren, in as the club prepared for its first Champions League campaign. in five years.

The German’s first season was largely spent operating as a makeshift full-back as Rodgers experimented with new ways to reignite his side, which had fallen by the wayside after challenging for the Premier League the previous season.

But it wasn’t until Jurgen Klopp was appointed manager in October 2015 that Can, who scored the first goal of the German’s reign in a Europa League tie against Rubin Kazan, began to flourish.

His Reds career, however, has been punctuated with disappointment as Can, who made 167 appearances for the club in total, suffered defeats in the 2016 League Cup and Europa League finals, as well as the 2018 Champions League final with Real Madrid in his last. appearance for the club as he turned down a contract extension at Anfield in favor of joining Juventus.

“I had many offers from very good teams,” said Can.

“I decided to come to Juventus because I think the project here is very big. They have very big goals. I want to be part of the project here.

“I’m very happy to be here. I know how Juventus play, I watched a lot of matches last season. One of my biggest idols was Zidane, who also played here.

“My first coach when I started playing football was a big Juventus fan. When I was six or seven years old, he told me that one day I would play for Juventus. Now I’m here and it’s a cool story.

“The club has had good contact with my agent for many years. I just know how big the club is and the mentality of the club – they want to win titles. That’s my mentality too. I came here to win titles.

“I think the first target has to be winning Serie A and then the Champions League. That has to be our goal. I’m here to help the team.”

His stay at Torino was short-lived, lasting just 37 Serie A appearances, before being loaned out to Borussia Dortmund in January 2020, shortly after being left out of the club’s Champions League squad by manager Maurizio Sarri. Can later revealed that he had battled thyroid cancer during his time at Turin.

“I’m so grateful to the doctors at Juventus, Can told Dazn in January 2023. “They called me two months after the club medicals. I didn’t know what was going on, I didn’t even know what thyroid was, and I would never have imagined that I had cancer. The move to Turin was worth it, just for that.”

Now, however, after a decade of trying to establish himself at some of Europe’s biggest clubs, Can has found a home at Borussia Dortmund and is short of 158 appearances. Which is why this weekend’s Champions League final against esteemed 14-time winners Real Madrid will feel like a full-circle moment for the midfielder.

“We’re ready, that’s football. Every day is different, now we’re in the final. We’re delighted to have made it,” he said of Saturday night. “We can’t wait to play it.”