"All this crap ..."

“I’m going to die!” Cancer drama surrounding ex-Rapid goalkeeper

Georg Koch, goalkeeper at SK Rapid for seven games in the 2009 season

(Bild: GEPA)

A terrible confession by a former goalkeeper in German and Austrian soccer is causing consternation and anxiety: Georg Koch, goalkeeper for SK Rapid for nine games in the 2009 season, has been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer! "The disease is incurable, I will die. But God has not yet decided when he will take me!" 

As the 52-year-old German revealed in an interview with "Bild am Sonntag", he has known about the disease for around a year. "The whole mess was discovered during a routine check-up," says Koch, who, by his own admission, had not been doing so well beforehand. "My blood values were conspicuously bad. The doctor then told me the diagnosis at some point and gave me another six months - but he was way off the mark." He hadn't lost his sense of humor despite the cancer - and so he jokingly warned his 70-year-old doctor "that he should be careful that it doesn't turn around and I visit him at his funeral".

End of career after scandal in Vienna derby
His time at Rapid in the 2008/09 season was not only to be short-lived - it was also to mark the beginning of the end of his career. The German, who had been brought in to replace the then injured regular goalkeeper Helge Payer, suffered a circulatory collapse during a Vienna derby when a firecracker was thrown from the Austria supporters' block and detonated right next to him, from which he never really recovered. Damage to his inner ear led to persistent balance problems which, despite several months of therapy, could not be remedied and were no longer compatible with his profession as a professional footballer.

Now he is going through an even more difficult time. "It's bitter when you go through your hair and suddenly have a whole tuft of hair in your hands," said Koch. "Things you used to do in five seconds now take me half a minute. But I have to come to terms with the illness. Complaining is useless and has never been my thing." There are "these phases" in which he asks himself why he got it.

"I had a great life!"
"But once you've been on a cancer ward yourself and you see how much misery there is and that it also affects small children and young people, then I can put it into a different perspective and come to the conclusion: I had a great life!" said Koch, who stated that he is currently being treated "with medication from the USA": "I just couldn't take the misery on the cancer wards anymore, it was getting me down." Koch had most recently worked in soccer as a goalkeeping coach and later as team manager at Viktoria Köln. Last year, the club announced that Koch was retiring for personal reasons.