Cinja was diagnosed with leukemia and asked for just one thing: to return home to face treatment alongside her family, and the football world is standing by her.
Eren Dinkçi, her fiancé and an SC Freiburg player, didn’t hesitate. At 24, he put his career on hold to be by her side and joined Werder Bremen on a one-year loan for around 400 thousand dollars.
The club that let him leave completely understood the reason: the board and coach Julian Schuster did everything they could to make the transfer happen.
Since New Year’s Day, the couple has not sat idly by. Together with the DKMS organization, they launched stem cell donation campaigns that have already brought in thousands of new donors.
This time, football stepped aside to make way for something greater.