Former French footballer Pascal Nouma has opened up about the cancer he was diagnosed with in 2001 while playing for Olympique de Marseille.
- Footballer Pascal Nouma spoke about the cancer he was diagnosed with while playing for OM.
- He appeared in 11 games while ill.
- He had 8 months of treatment.
A striker who played for PSG, RC Lens and RC Strasbourg, Pascal Nouma especially won the hearts of football fans when he played for Besiktas in Turkey in the early 2000s. However, one of his main fighting, he took it up when he joined Olympique de Marseille (OM).
He revealed in an interview with West France having participated in several football matches with cancer.
Muscle cancer: ‘I always felt tired’
It all started with the removal of a cyst on the back of my neck “as big as a golf ball”remembers Pascal Nouma. Tests revealed that the footballer was suffering from cancer “muscular”.
“I didn’t take it seriously. For eight months, I was at the Nice clinic. Chemotherapy, radiotherapy… I played 11 matches at OM with cancer!”confides the man who is now 52 years old.
“I always felt tired, I didn’t understand because I was coming off a great season with Besiktas. Doctor Gaillaud (the club doctor, Editor’s note) told me: ‘I don’t know how you managed to play with cancer.”
The athlete decides to keep his illness a secret. “The club was not aware, medical confidentiality. The doc said I had an ankle problem”remembers the former athlete in the pages of the daily.
Finally, the Marseille club as well as Bernard Tapie, boss at the time, learned of his health problems. The news spread quickly throughout the world of football. “It reached all the way to Turkey, and as soon as the Besiktas fans found out, they shouted my name in every match: ‘We want Pascal Nouma to come back, if he has to die, he has to die in Turkey !'”
“I learned of the seriousness of my cancer two years ago”
The former striker overcame his cancer and continued to roam the football fields for a few more years. He also returned to the Besiktas club for the 2002-2003 season. But he admits that returning to competition after eight months of therapy was not easy. “I had to relearn how to play football. It was like swimming across the Atlantic”remembers Pascal Nouma.
Nevertheless, the athlete measures his luck. “I learned about the seriousness of my cancer two years ago: I was told that 98% of people with my disease died.”
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