Sebastien Haller
How Sebastien Haller became an AFCON icon just over a year after recovering from testicular cancer
Confederation conqueror, cult figure for the Ivory Coast nation, a proven source of goals as well as selflessness, and a beacon of hope for all those who have had their lives turned upside down by a chilling medical discovery – what a life-affirming journey Borussia Dortmund striker Sebastien Haller has been on over the past 18 months, going from a testicular cancer diagnosis in the summer of 2022 to flicking home a late winning goal for the Ivorians in their recent AFCON final on home soil against Nigeria.
A player and man blessed with an unbreakable spirit, Haller naturally found it hard to contain his emotions at the final whistle. “It feels good,” he told the former French international centre-back turned beIN Spor ts reporter Basile Boli. “It feels good to be rewarded a little. To have the benefit of continuing to believe.” Noticing the tears welling up in Haller’s eyes, Boli duly began to sob himself, the two men ending up in a sympathetic embrace.
Not so long ago, Haller, 29, appeared distinctly unlikely to even be included in the Ivorian squad for the African main event. He had spent most of the first half of the 2023-24 campaign on the Dortmund bench, losing his place in the starting line-up to the newly-acquired Niclas Fullkrug. With only four competitive starts for the Schwar z-Gelben prior to the winter break, Haller was alarmingly short of match practice and to further complicate matters his ankle was giving him hell.
The Ivorians picked him nevertheless, and despite not being fit enough to make a contribution in their near-disastrous group phase – losing two of their three games, sacking head coach Jean-Louis Gasset following a 4-0 thumping by Equatorial Guinea and only qualifying for the last 16 as a lucky loser – he would come good in the knockout rounds. A second-half substitute in the round of 16 tie with Senegal, he calmly converted his penalty kick in the shootout victory, did a good job of leading the line after another substitute appearance in the quarterfinal clash with Mali, then volleyed home the only goal of the game in the semi-final victory over the Democratic Republic of Congo, a tasty appetiser to his main course heroics in the final.
“One of my personal goals at these African Championships was to give everything I had,” he explained in the same beIN Spor ts interview. “It was my good fortune to be selected even though my fitness was in doubt. When I picked up this ankle injury [in late December 2023], it was supposed to keep me out for six to eight weeks. It might well have been the case that the final was my one and only appearance of the tournament. The ankle is still a problem for me but it was worth giving it a go. My teammates encouraged me to stay on the pitch as lon
