A former Germany star has revealed the 10-year struggle that they have been dealing with as a result of a surprise health battle.
The forward won 14 international caps with Germany, scoring four goals for Die Mannschaft, and played over 300 games in the Bundesliga for clubs such as Wolfsburg and Union Berlin.
Now retired, the 36-year-old has returned to the public eye as a participant in the German version of Big Brother, where one revelation earlier this week had already caught the headlines.
Now, though, he has opened up to his fellow housemates about the extreme case of haemorrhoids he has endured over the last decade.
‘I have haemorrhoids. I have never been to the doctors about them,’ former Borussia Moenchengladbach star Max Kruse revealed.
‘I have been fighting a running battle with them for ten years.
‘I am no fan of the idea of using the sort of chair a woman sits on at the gynaecologist’s surgery to have my backside looked at.
‘Then someone will fumble around in my rear end. I still struggle to cope with the idea.’
While housemates Leyla Lahouar and Mike Heiter indicated their sympathy and urged the former footballer to visit a medical professional at the culmination of the series, they did also have questions.
Their primary concerns appeared to be over the hygiene of sharing a pool and toilet with Kruse, given his affliction.
Yet that is not the first surprise admission that Kruse has made since appearing on the programme.
Earlier this week he revealed that he was caught with a sex worker in his hotel room in London ahead of a friendly with England in 2013 by now Barcelona boss Hansi Flick.
He explained that during a poker game at the team hotel somebody suggested he ‘order a woman’ to his room.
‘I went back to my room. She arrived, I had an uneasy feeling, but we got talking,’ he began. ‘We were together for five minutes when there was a knock on the door. It was Hansi Flick, the assistant manager, and the team coordinator Oliver Bierhoff.
‘They told me: “Send her away – we’ll talk about this in the morning.”
‘I hadn’t been sensible enough – I had simply told her to come to my room.
‘Normally I would always be clever and book an extra room, on a different floor.
‘My bosses told me the next day: “We’re happy with your performances on the pitch, but if this story comes out it will create a really bad image. You can’t do something like this. Either focus fully on your football, or else there’ll be no World Cup for you next year.”
‘I behaved myself really well for the rest of the season, but still found myself cut from the national squad.
‘I was gobsmacked. It would have been amazing to be part of the squad that won the World Cup.
‘There have been plenty of other players who have invited escorts to their hotel rooms.
‘But maybe they have been a bit cleverer than me in the ways how they did it.’