Chelsea’s Champions League Victory Was Straight Out of a Movie
Keeper Ann-Katrin Berger was the hero after recovering from thyroid cancer just a few months earlier
As Ann-Katrin Berger stood between goal posts at Stamford Bridge last week, the stakes couldn’t have been clearer: If she saved this shot, Chelsea would win its game against Lyon, the best women’s club team in the world, and advance to the semifinals of the UEFA Women’s Champions League. You might think Berger would be nervous in a moment like this. But as the camera zoomed in on her face, she simply looked focused. “I love penalties,” she said after the game. “I know I have no pressure. No one thinks I have to save them—it’s more they have to score.”
Lyon’s Lindsey Horan shot. And before she even kicked the ball, Berger launched herself—full extension—through the air. In a split second, Berger knocked down the shot. Then she shot up, ran, and slid on her knees across the grass, pounding her chest and letting out a roar. Her teammates dogpiled on top of her, and by this point, Berger’s face was full of emotion. It was clear that this was more than a win for her.
And knowing what Berger has been through to get to this moment, you just might have teared up too.
Just a few months earlier, at the Euros, Berger was set to represent Germany. During routine pre-tournament medical tests, doctors notice something off with her blood test. And so, between games, Berger would travel to the doctor for more examinations, more poking and prodding, without ever telling anybody on her team except her coaches. Those coaches told her, repeatedly, that she could go home. They explained that there are times when things are bigger soccer. But Berger refused to come off the field. They didn’t understand—this was bigger than soccer, which is exactly why she needed it now more than ever. “I can't just go home and sit there and wait for the next scan or the next ultrasound,” she said. “I have to do something.”
With Berger in goal, Germany kept winning—all the way to the finals against England. Just a few days before that match, Berger went to the hospital for an MRI and got the bad news: the thyroid cancer that had been in remission for four years had returned. She’d need a biopsy.
Still, Berger kept playing. And when it was time to return to Chelsea after Germany fell short 2-1 in the finals, she sat down with Chelsea’s manager, Emma Hayes, to tell her the news.
“What can we do to help you, make it quicker, make it better, make it whatever you need?” Hayes asked.
“I don't need anything,” Berger replied. “Just try to treat me as normal and let me guide you.”
She didn’t tell anybody else on the team, just kept playing and practicing, wanting to make sure nobody treated her with kids’ gloves. Finally, when it was nearly time for her operation, Berger called the team around and broke the news. She told them not to worry. She said she was just going in for “a spa day.”
The entire time Berger was in the hospital, she says, she thought about soccer. And the second she could, she returned to the pitch. She’d have to take a nap after every practice, but that was fine, as long as she was playing soccer again. “That’s how I've found to deal with the illness over the years,” Berger said. “You have to focus on something else, to hold onto something…Football saved my brain and saved my mental health because I had something to hold on to and I think that's the main message from me for anyone who is going through anything. It doesn't matter if it's illness, mental health or anything, if you hold onto something and for me, it was football.”
She continued, “Football was part of my life since I was four….And if I didn't have that, I probably would've started to feel sorry for myself and think about it all the time. Every time I step on the pitch, everything around me shuts down. I don't hear anything, it's just the ball, the 10 players in front of me and that's it.”
And as last weekend’s penalty shootout proved, that ball will surely stay in front of her. No matter what happens to Berger, she’s not letting it into the back of the net.
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