Manchester United defender Luke Shaw reveals injury hell as he wondered if he’d have to retire after horror leg break
Left-back says 'it's hard to describe how good it feels' having returned to first-team football
LUKE SHAW has revealed how his horror leg break left him wondering if he would ever play football again.
The Manchester United defender saw his campaign end in an instant when PSV defender Hector Moreno dangerously lunged at him in September last year.
Shaw suffered a double fracture - Moreno was named man of the match that night.
The 21-year-old would end up missing Euro 2016 but has recovered to start in both Premier League matches under new manager Jose Mourinho and has performed well.
He has now revealed that the injury - which required four operations that left two three-inch scars on his calf - caused not only physical problems, but mental ones too.
He told : "It’s hard to describe how good
";I remember I said I didn’t know if I was going to play again.
"I didn’t properly think that, but it did go through my head a couple of times at the start.
"Now, I don’t like looking at the video any more because I’ve probably watched it enough.
"But I can look at the pictures.
Even now, I think: ‘Oh my God.’ I’ve shown a few of the lads.
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"They don’t like them either and I can remember, on the night, Memphis [Depay] turning his head away because he didn’t want to look.
"I was in shock, to be honest. The pain came later. I was just so upset because I knew I was going to be out for so long.
"You might have seen the picture where I had a tear coming down my face.
";They took me back to the dressing room and it was weird because at the start it didn’t hurt as much as I thought it would have.
"I remember getting my phone, texting my mum and tweeting everyone.
"It sounds mad, I know, but my leg was broken and I didn’t know what to do. I thought: ‘I’ve got to do something.’"
Shaw says that at that point the pain was yet to hit him but it did shortly after.
Hard.
"Then, that night, lying in hospital, I swear to God the pain was something else," he added.
"Oh God, the worst you could ever imagine. My mum was next to me and I remember saying to her: ‘They have to do something because I actually can’t keep going with this amount of pain.’
"They had to open up my leg to pull out all the clotted-up blood.
"They put me to sleep, but it didn’t stop the pain when I woke up again."
Shaw reveals he could hardly walk for six months and still gets pain nearly a year after the event.
"I’d heard other players talking about dark times when they were trying to get back from bad injuries.
"I didn’t think I would be like that but, yeah, there were parts when I was thinking: ‘I just don’t want to be here any more.’
"I could hardly walk for six months, never mind play football.
"I was limping for so long. I was walking with crutches – as in, properly walking – after about the first month because I thought it was much better to put my body weight on and build up the strength.
"But people have said I was still limping even after I came off the crutches.
"I still get aches. I don’t go a day without feeling it. It’s 100 per cent better but it’s normal, apparently, to feel it after such a bad injury.
"In the first three or four weeks when I started training outside it felt good, but then all of a sudden it started aching.
"It didn’t hurt, but it was aching and aching and even before I went out I could feel it and I was thinking: ‘Fuck … is it ever going to go away?’"
As well as those scars Shaw met with a psychologist to ensure he was in the right frame of mind to continue playing.
"Most of it was about how it affected me," he said.
"But I don’t feel I have come back any different.
"It’s harder for my family really.
"My mum was really nervous anyway watching me play but it’s even worse for her now.
"Whenever I go into a tackle she grabs hold of whoever is next to her because she can barely watch.
"But I’m fine. I’ve had a couple of times when someone has come across to tackle me and for a split second I’ve thought ‘Whoa’, but in the last game it didn’t even cross my mind."