Ivan Klasnic winces as he remembers the day his life was turned upside down. It was November 2005 and Werder Bremen had just beaten Udinese 4-3 in the Champions League. But for the striker whose goals had helped get them into Europe's premier club competition it was the start of an ordeal that would almost cost him his life and leave him embroiled in a bitter legal battle with the Bundesliga club.
What has happened to Klasnic since that night in the Weserstadion would make it perfectly legitimate to hail him as a walking miracle were he not so reluctant to be singled out as unique. Every footballer wants to be known as "one of the lads" and Klasnic is no different. "I don't want people to think of me as special," he says. He does, however, appreciate why, whatever else he does in his career, he will always be remembered as the guy who not only survived two kidney transplants but came back to play professional football and establish himself as a star of the Croatia national side.
It is a story of courage, perseverance and one man's quiet but unbreakable resolve. But there are glimpses of hurt and anger, too. Klasnic, now at Bolton Wanderers and preparing to play Blackburn Rovers tomorrow, has a lawsuit pending against Werder Bremen's medical team for not having diagnosed his renal disease earlier when, he says, he had undergone regular blood tests since joining them in 2001. "We are going to a judge and I am hoping it will be over next year. Even now I think, 'Why, why, why? Why did the doctors not see it before?' If it had been picked up earlier, I could have avoided having a transplant."
The legalities eventually led the striker to leave the Bundesliga club. "I had seven years there and I did a good job for them but I told the club, 'You must change something with your doctors or I will go. They would not change anything, so I said, 'OK, I cannot stay here.'"
But first to the beginning and that game against Udinese when Bremen lost a 3-0 lead in six crazy minutes before coming back to get a late, dramatic winner. It was one of the more exhilarating matches of that season's Champions League. But Klasnic's jubilation at the final whistle was offset by a dull, aching pain in the pit of his stomach.
"They took me to hospital and said I might need my appendix removed," he remembers from a settee at Bolton's training ground. "But when the hospital took some blood tests they told me they could not operate because there was something wrong, a problem with the creatinine. They asked me if I had had kidney problems before and I said no. They did some more tests and that's when they broke the news that it was serious."
He was told his kidneys could probably be saved with drugs. By December the following year, however, Klasnic was suffering from renal failure and needing a transplant to save his life. The timing could hardly have been more excruciating. His wife, Patricia, had just given birth to his first child, a daughter, Fabiana. "It must have been terrible for her and all my family," he says. "The baby arrived in December and they were telling me I had no choice but to have this operation in January. It should have been a time of great celebration but there was always this in the back of our minds."
He could have been put on a waiting list and had dialysis three times a week, which would have almost certainly meant ending his career. Instead his mother, Sima, donated one of her kidneys. "We had all the tests, the cross-checks, and everything was good," Klasnic says. "It was a terrible feeling, a sense of fear, being a son and putting my mother through all of that worry. But she wanted to help. I could have been on a waiting list for five years but, normally, if you get a transplant from your mother or father it always works."
Five days later, on Klasnic's 27th birthday, he was informed that his body had rejected the organ. "I don't know what the odds are – 5,000 to one, maybe even a million to one. I just know that was the lowest moment for me. The doctors told me it hadn't worked and it was easily the worst moment in my life. I was left thinking that my mother had gone through all this for nothing. I came out and had to break the news to my family in the next room. It was something I will never forget."
Hope, though, was not lost. Seven weeks later Klasnic underwent a successful second operation in Hanover, this time receiving a kidney from his father, John. "I am so proud of both my mother and my father. They have always made great sacrifices for me."
He then began the arduous process of trying to rebuild his career. But his recovery was not without its complications. Five months after the surgery, Bremen prevented him from training because of their concerns that his body was unable to withstand intensive physical strain. "I'd lost a lot of weight after the operation. I was not my normal condition. My football was not so good and the club told me to stay on the grass bank and watch from the side. They didn't think I should join in. At least it meant I could be with my daughter every day. At the same time, though, I was thinking 'Why me?'"
But Klasnic did make it back. In December that year, 13 months since his previous appearance, he was selected to start a German Cup tie against St Pauli, the club where he had begun his career. "It was a proud moment," he says. "It was our second team and, normally, not too many people would bother to come to see us play a team from Germany's second division but there were 16,000 people there and when I came out all the supporters were shouting my name. The St Pauli supporters joined in, too, and the hair on my neck and my arms was standing on end. I just started crying, I could not stop myself."
His club had given him a new one-year contract while he was convalescing but Klasnic could not stay at a club he was intending to sue and he moved to Nantes shortly after starring for Croatia in Euro 2008. Raised in Hamburg, and having turned down the chance to play for Germany because of his Croatian ancestry, he had become the first player ever to participate at a major tournament after a kidney transplant, scoring against Poland in the group stage and Turkey in the quarter-finals. But it was a difficult first season in France, culminating in the club's relegation and his move to Bolton on a year's loan on transfer deadline day in September.
His perspective on life, he says, has changed. "When I was younger I used to think that football was the only thing that mattered but now that I am older my priority is my family and my health."
He is an ambassador for a humanitarian company that raises money for young Croatian children with kidney disease to have treatment abroad and he is also a campaigner for donors. "I get a lot of letters from people who are ill and I want to be an example to them, to show them that they can get back to having a good life."
