“Not brought the hoped -for success”
Daughter of Diekmeier: setback in the fight against cancer
09/27/2025 – 11:37 a.m.Reading time: 2 min.
The daughter of longtime HSV professional Dennis Diekmeier is seriously ill. A new update brings bad news.
The year 2025 started with a shock message for the former Bundesliga professional Dennis Diekmeier: his 14-year-old daughter Delani was found a malignant tumor on the kidney that had already scattered in the lungs. “We have to make many decisions-about therapies, about alternatives. To classify all of this is not easy,” said Diekmeier recently in the Sport1 interview.
He remembered the early days: “We sat with the doctor and he said: Survival chance of five to ten percent. If not, then a maximum of one to five years,” said Diekmeier, who ended his active career in the summer of 2024 with today’s regional league team SV Sandhausen.
In the meantime, several months have passed, daughter Delani has already completed chemotherapy and operations. Most recently, there was hope for immunotherapy – but the desired effect has so far been expired, as Diekmeier’s wife Dana now said. “Delani received her third immunotherapy last Monday. Next Monday, she will be operating on the lungs again,” she wrote in her Instagram story. “You try to remove as many metastases as possible. Unfortunately, immunotherapy has not quite brought the hoped -for success.”
According to Diekmeier, a different therapy will be tried after the operation on Monday “and in a few weeks a further surgery of the other lung wing,” it said.
Although she is only 14 years old, Delani showed herself strongly: “You are sitting there, finished and your daughter only says: ‘I can do it. I am one of the few who can do it,” said Diekmeier, for whom Delani is “an incredible fighter”. “My greatest respect how my little one deals with the whole situation.”
So that Diekmeier can focus on his daughter completely, he is currently pausing his work as an assistant coach in Sandhausen. “It was the absolutely right decision. To be with my daughter to give her many moments of happiness-that feels right,” said the former defender: “I got to know a lot of people-players, coaches, manager. But that a 14-year-old girl is so positive and combative is the greatest way for me.”