Sebastien Haller

The 30-year-old striker has been under contract with Borussia Dortmund since July 2022 and made 41 appearances (12 goals/six assists) for BVB in all competitions up to June 2024 (cut-off date for all statistics).

His fate touched the whole of German football. His disciplined fight against cancer impressed everyone. After a six-month enforced break with two operations and four chemotherapy sessions, Haller returned to the pitch in January 2023. “His personal story is the fairytale of the past season, perhaps the fairytale of European club football,” said Hans-Joachim Watzke in an interview with the members' magazine Borussia (June 2023 issue). “I remember exactly how he and all of us received the news during the summer training camp in Bad Ragaz that he had cancer. He underwent two operations, had to undergo four chemotherapy sessions and was so strong during this time that he even built up other people. After just six months, he is back on the pitch and playing. What kind of strength does this man have? It’s really impressive.’

“You can get cancer, but you can also beat it. I've learnt that over the past six months,” explained Sébastian Haller in an interview with the members’ magazine Borussia (March 2023 issue), emphasising that he “never doubted that I would return to the pitch. I still remember the meeting with our doctor very well when he told me: Okay, Sébastien, you can get back into training. That was around 20 December. I knew then that the tumour was out and there was nothing left of the disease in my body.”

The striker played in all 19 league games after the winter break in 2022/23 (15 times as a starter). With him, BVB notched up an average of 2.4 points per game, compared to just 1.7 without him. “When he came back, we weren't even in a Champions League place, and our regular attacking players hadn't scored a goal in the first 15 matchdays - if I remember correctly. With Sébastien, we then developed into the highest scoring attack in the league,” recalled Watzke. Haller himself scored nine times, which was BVB's top figure for the entire season together with Julian Brandt and Donyell Malen; these nine goals in the second half of the season were unrivalled by any other Bundesliga player. During his time at Frankfurt, the Frenchman was already known as a striker who doesn't shy away from a duel and can assert himself well, and it was the same at BVB. He won a very strong 53% of tackles and is Borussia's strongest player under the high ball.

The fact that things didn't go so well for him in the 2023/24 season can be explained in several ways. Haller was in the starting line-up for the first four matchdays, but was then displaced by Niclas Füllkrug and repeatedly struggled with injuries. He subsequently only started once more, on Matchday 29 in Mönchengladbach, where he had to be substituted after a foul in the eighth minute. The centre-forward scored his only goals in 2023/24 in the DFB-Pokal (two in the first round match against Schott Mainz) and in the UEFA Champions League in a 2-1 defeat at Atletico Madrid (without this goal, Dortmund's run would likely have come to an end). And he scored for his home country Ivory Coast at the Africa Cup: Haller scored the only goal in the semi-final (a 1-0 win over DR Congo) and the winner to make it 2-1 against Nigeria in the final.

He was born on 22 June 1994 in Ris-Orangis, just outside Paris. His father is French and his mother is from the Ivory Coast. He therefore has both nationalities. He plays internationally for his mother's country and has made 15 senior international appearances to date. He played for France at youth level, scoring 25 goals in 51 youth internationals from U16 to U21. He did judo as a child, which is another reason why he is extremely agile.       

Haller signed his first professional contract with AJ Auxerre as a 17-year-old in June 2011 and played his first second division match in July 2012. In January 2015, he moved to FC Utrecht. He described his two-and-a-half years in the Dutch Eredivisie with 51 goals in 98 games as a turning point in his career, which then really took off. Haller moved to Eintracht Frankfurt for the 2017/18 season and won the DFB-Pokal (beating Bayern Munich 3-1 in the final) in his first season with the club. In the following season, the 1.90 metre tall athlete was directly involved in 24 of Frankfurt's 60 Bundesliga goals. He scored 15 times himself and set up nine goals. And he could have scored even more if he hadn't been injured on Matchday 27. The Ivorian joined West Ham United in the English Premier League for the 2019/20 season. He scored three goals in his first three league games; after a year and a half on the island, he had scored 14 goals in 54 games. In January 2021, Haller returned to the Netherlands to join his former coach Erik ten Hag, who had moulded him into a top striker in Utrecht. In an Ajax shirt, he won the league title in 2021 and 2022 (as top scorer) and the cup in 2021. A total of eleven goals meant third place in the annual ranking of top scorers, with Haller scoring in every game in the group stage - something that only superstar Cristiano Ronaldo had ever achieved before.

Haller is married, has two children (daughter Chiara and son Eden) and has a down-to-earth and humble personality.