“They sent me home after tests, the club doctor was worried, but he wouldn’t tell me what was wrong. The first 15 days were the worst, I could barely stand up, I was vomiting, I lost 20kg and had no strength.

“At the start, Roma chose to hide everything from me. I decided to isolate myself and remove social media, but one day I looked at my phone. An article on Twitter said: ‘Leandro Castan has a brain tumour, he could die.’

“The fear just washed over me. I still didn’t know what was wrong with me. Nobody had told me anything, not the club, nor the doctors. Nobody. ‘Stay calm’ was all they’d say.

“I then remembered my grandfather had died due to a brain tumour and I thought my destiny would be the same.”

Castan had surgery to remove the cavernoma in his brain, but it took two years to make a full recovery from such an invasive procedure.