Hantavirus, coach's tale is chilling: "Like a needle in the skull"
After the outbreak recorded on the cruise ship MV Hondius, there has been renewed talk of hantavirus, a family of viruses transmitted mainly by wild rodents. Among the people who have contracted the virus is Ralph Hasenhüttl, who was infected in the summer of 2012 while at the helm of Aalen.
Interviewed by the Mirror, the Austrian coach returned to talk about his case: “I was cleaning the deck without a mask and I think I inhaled the dust. It takes about two or three weeks before the infection sets in and symptoms appear. I went to bed and that’s when the headache started. I felt as if I had a needle in my skull, then I started to experience severe back pain. It was as if I had a knife in my back.”
“I was in the hospital in the intensive care unit for a long time and I didn’t know when I would come back. The heartbeat was so intense that I would wake up, feel a thud in my chest. There was no cure, you had to wait for the body to produce antibodies and then hope to survive. All that was left was to wait. I was trying to ward off negative thoughts because I felt young, healthy and strong. I thought, ‘Why should I die from a virus?'” said Hasenhüttl.
The Austrian as a footballer is best remembered for his time at Austria Vienna (156 appearances between 1989 and 1994) but he also wore the jerseys of Grazer AK, Salzburg, Malines, Lierse SK, Cologne, Greuther Fürth and Bayern Munich.
In 2007 he began coaching at Unterhaching, a German club based in Upper Bavaria, then Aalen, Ingolstadt 04, Leipzig, Southampton and Wolfsburg until 2025.
