Out injured in the top game
Worst fear: Can is threatened with a long outage
02/28/2026 – 10:48 p.mReading time: 2 minutes
Emre Can injured his knee in the game against FC Bayern Munich and initially continued playing. Now there are many indications of a serious injury.
Borussia Dortmund may have to be without captain Emre Can for a long time. The 48-time German international injured his left knee in the top Bundesliga game against FC Bayern Munich (2:3). After the game, coach Niko Kovač spoke of a possible cruciate ligament injury.
The doctor “didn’t have a good feeling” after the first examination, Kovač said on Sky. When asked whether it was a cruciate ligament injury, the coach replied: “It looks a bit like it. It is, and he heard something too.” If the cruciate ligament injury is confirmed, “then it will be a really hard blow for us again,” said Kovač.
For Can, who was last nominated for the German national team in September 2024, this would also see his dreams of returning to the DFB squad shattered and his World Cup dream shattered. A torn cruciate ligament usually results in a break of almost six months in men’s football.
Can initially didn’t want to be substituted and came back onto the field. “He then continued again and the second action, I think, finished him off, unfortunately,” said Kovač. The BVB coach replaced his defender in stoppage time in the first half.
Kovač defended BVB’s medical department: “I asked him and the doctors didn’t know what was going on. They wanted to examine him, he said: ‘I’ll carry on now.’ Then you as a doctor can’t say anything.”
