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Matteo; about to under-go major spinal surgury
Topic Started: 17th December 2010 - 03:41 PM (333 Views)
spud
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Dom's interview in the YEP
 

Professional footballers have much to be grateful for.
Many of us are paid a fortune to do the most popular and sought-after job in the world. But I'll never let anyone tell me it's a free ride – not when I'm about to undergo a medical procedure that would give you nightmares.

At some point today I'll have spinal surgery at a hospital in Stoke, the only answer to an injury that has done its best to ruin my life.

The best case scenario is that three of my discs are replaced with metal. If the damage is as bad as it feels, I could end up losing five or six. Needless to say, I'm extremely apprehensive about the outcome.

Whenever you undergo an operation like this, you're obliged to sign paperwork accepting certain risks. The biggest of those is that I suffer permanent spinal damage – and that's been made very clear to me.
I know the surgeon well and I trust him implicitly, but my health is entirely in the hands of someone else. Whatever happens, it'll be morphine for me this Christmas rather than lager.

This all stems back to my playing days and the injury I'm suffering from is the injury that finished my career. I was at Stoke City at the time and I broke down while I was out for a jog. After a short tour of a few back specialists, I was basically told that the best option – the only option – was to call it a day.

Those are horrible words to hear. You know you'll retire eventually, but you expect it to be on your terms. However much your body aches, you always assume a scalpel can fix you. But the writing was on the wall, whether I wanted to see it or not. The pain in my back had become so bad that I couldn't put my boots and socks on. I should have known what the final MRI scan would say.

The truth was that I'd been listening to sobering comments for some time. A lot of Championship clubs don't have their own doctor and when I was a Stoke player, we were looked after by a doctor in Cardiff. I was having problems with one of my feet and taking needles in the sole to get me through matches. They're some of the most horrible injections
I've ever had. When I told the doctor this, his response was 'what on earth are you doing?' If he'd had his way, I'd have packed the game in there and then.

Some of my team-mates felt the same. They'd look at the swelling and think 'is that really worth it?' I thought it was.

This might seem naive or reckless but I wasn't going to let my career go because of a sore foot or a sore back.

My body was telling me to be honest with myself but it's asking a lot for someone who loves football with a passion to let it go.

With hindsight, I pushed myself to far.

But injuries are part of football and I don't mean in the sense that they happen to everyone from time to time. I mean that every week before every game, each club has players who are either struggling to be fit, likely to be fit or determined to be fit no matter what.

On any given weekend, countless professionals take part in matches against their better judgement or despite the fact that they'd be justified in refusing to play.

Much of the time, the blame for that lies with the players themselves. God knows I sympathise. The biggest worry for any footballer is the thought of losing your place in the side.

Take the 2000-01 season when I was with Leeds United – under no circumstances was I going to give in to injury if it meant I would be on the bench when we went to Milan or Valencia in the Champions League.

If a local anaesthetic did the trick then you could count me in. In my head, it felt like a better alternative than sacrificing some of the biggest nights of my career.

Blackburn Rovers were probably the only club where I didn't have injections to get me through matches. Everywhere else, and especially as a youngster with Liverpool, it was a routine response to niggles and strains.

At one stage with Leeds, I was doing no training through the week until a Friday morning, when I'd join in for a bit of work on the team's shape. The upshot was that I'd be warming up for every game with doubt in my mind about whether my fitness would carry me through.

Adrenaline usually does the trick but imagine throwing yourself into a game against Manchester United when you know you're in no shape to be taking part. I think the word is unsustainable.

So this is D-Day for me. I'm not joking when I say that I really need this operation to work. I haven't slept properly for months and I can't lift anything remotely heavy. People who know me will tell you that I've got the posture of a hunchback and the surgeon has predicted, in all seriousness, that I'll grow by two inches if this operation goes well. All in all, it's been a very long time since I was able to
function properly.

I've already accepted that I'll never be able to sprint again. It'll be enough for me if I can get back to the gym and do a bit of jogging because I took a lot of pride in keeping myself fit, before I was a footballer and afterwards.

I want to finish my coaching badges next year and I've no intention of being a coach who watches from afar. I want to be hands on and in the thick of whichever club I'm working for. But that's entirely down to my body playing ball.

I sound like I'm fishing for sympathy but that's not what this is about. What I'd like people to do is to think about the implications for a player who wasn't lucky enough to earn my wages. I'm not disillusioned – I know that I was in the top bracket for salaries for a lot of my career and I've got the money to pay for this surgery. Which is just as well because it's costing an absolute fortune!

My condition meant I wasn't able to take out insurance and I won't get any funding from within the game. The point, I suppose, is that I don't need it.

But what is a lower-league player whose career was finished by football supposed to do? Live like a cripple for the rest of his life?

As things stand, I wouldn't be able to do a full day's work as a labourer or in any industry which involved physical work. It's not even an option.

The irony is that I'm not someone who's especially renowned for having retired due to injury. It makes you wonder how many lads are in the same boat.

I'll be writing to the Professional Footballers' Association about my situation, not to look for money or help but to make them aware of the position I'm in. Specifically, to make them aware that the cost of the operation has fallen entirely to me.

This has opened my eyes to the issue of aftercare for professionals and I really have to ask whether it's good enough.

Some of us can afford to cure the physical effects of football. It's safe to assume that many more cannot. If I won't stand up for them then no-one will.

(http://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/leedsunited/Leeds-United-The-hidden-downside.6662740.jp)


Goodluck lad.
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Mugsey
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100% Leeds
Best of luck to a genuine man who i hope makes a full & speedu recovery
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Bay Rebel
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100% Leeds
Aye the very best wishes for a full recovery and painless 2011
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305miles2EllandRd
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Stand up Comedian
A true Leeds legend.

Hope it all goes well for him.
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Fitz
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Nice guy, I hope it goes well for him.
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Dee
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really very nice person
See, i want to snog him all over again...just on the grounds of kissing it all better you understand...seriously though, hope it all goes well. a great guy and a genuine one too!
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aksattee
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Most well behaved
Good Luck mate.

You left me with mnay a good memories.
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spud
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Closest thing to a progress report on Dom's rehabilitation...

Quote:
 
My back was causing me hell and I'm just about getting over the worst of that operation.


Taken from the following article...

Dom in YEP
 

Footballers get enough criticism without inviting it upon themselves. We're in the middle of a recession and times are hard.
So who wants to hear Nicklas Bendtner complaining that he gave up skiiing to pursue his career?

I've read some ridiculous things in my time but his comments were as stupid as they get. It's difficult enough for the man in the street to feel in touch with professional players these days.

It's virtually impossible when you see such a poor attempt to justify the wages paid to the average Premier League star. Someone should remind Bendtner that he'll have all the time and money he needs to go skiing when he announces his retirement 10 years down the line.

To be fair to him, I understand the basic thread of what he was trying to say – that a career in football isn't earned or maintained without making some sacrifices. That's absolutely true. Unfortunately, the most valid example of what you give up is not a hobby which many people would struggle to finance at the best of times. There are pros and cons to every job but it has to be said that the disadvantages of life as a footballer are few and far between. A skiing ban is hardly one of them.

An example I'd offer is the surgery I underwent in December.

My back was causing me hell and I'm just about getting over the worst of that operation. The problems with my spine are a direct result of being a footballer. Beyond that, the thing that used to frustrate me slightly was not being able to socialise as much as I would have liked and being dragged away from my family around Christmas. Every year I'd have liked to have done what people do – enjoy the day and have a couple of drinks – but I accepted when I turned professional that it
would be that way for 15 or 20 years.

On reflection, it doesn't count as a hardship at all. I'm in my 30s, I'm retired and I'm free to enjoy every Christmas as I please from here on. In that respect I'm very lucky and I'd say that most current and former players feel exactly the same. I'd like to think that most could attempt to defend their wages a bit more tactfully than Bendtner.

On several occasions, I received letters from the general public – people who worked as nurses, in shops or on building sites – comparing how much we earned to the salaries they pulled in. They usually came after a bad performance or a bad result. To be honest, they made you feel very guilty and they made sure you walked around with your eyes open.

You knew that these people worked longer, harder hours than you while
earning far less, and it wouldn't have said much about your character if you ignored what they were saying. Letters like that were the sort of things that reminded you to play every game as if it was your last.

But at the same time, all I did was accept the contracts that were offered to me by different clubs. While I understood the public's argument, I didn't really feel that their argument was with me.

Wages in football are a source of massive controversy but I think it's a bit simplistic to say that players are paid too much money. They're paid a disproportionate amount compared to the general public, no doubt about that, but football as an industry involves a dispreportionate amount of money. The piles of cash have to go somewhere and it seems right to me that a large chunk of it goes to those who play the game and provide the entertainment. It's surely a better situation than lining the pockets of directors in boardrooms.

The problem is that there's no rhyme or reason as to who gets paid what. What made me laugh about Bendtner's attempt to explain his salary is that I don't actually think he's worth the £50,000 a week he's rumoured to earn. There's a top player in there somewhere but he hasn't emerged yet.

The same could be said of some of the lads who rake it in at Chelsea and Manchester City.

Not all of them are the cream of the crop.

The amount a footballer earns these days seems to depend first and
foremost on who owns their club.

If you happen to wind up at Stamford Bridge or Eastlands, you're laughing. As a rule of thumb, no player in the world should be richer than Lionel Messi because no footballer in the world is better than him.

But the game at the top level is slipping further away from a position where your salary is directly linked to where you rank among the game's elite.

As for Bendtner, he really should think before he speaks. Comments like his tar everyone with the same brush. People don't read them and think 'what an idiot he is.' They read them and think 'there speaks a typical footballer.' He's done a disservice to his colleagues and he's made a mockery of a fantastic career which he's deeply fortunate to have.

If I was him I wouldn't lose sleep about my lack of skiiing holidays; I'd be counting my blessings night after night.
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garlic bread
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SHIRT LIFTER!!!!!!!!!!
one of the most down to earth modern day footballers i have ever had the pleasure of sharing a beer with. Top man
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KenDoddsDadsDogsDead
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Have you ever shoed a Horse?
Apparently, he once scored a fucking great goal somewhere. Bloody nice chap. Hope the recovery is going well.


Could do a job in this league.
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Fitz
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Perfectly formed member
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KenDoddsDadsDogsDead
12th February 2011 - 12:14 PM
Apparently, he once scored a fucking great goal somewhere. Bloody nice chap. Hope the recovery is going well.


Could do a job in this league.
No, you're thinking of Andy Hughes.......
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