Returning to competition last March after a cruciate ligament rupture, the 24-year-old midfielder returned to his recovery period. Thirteen months of doubt, which could have led him to early retirement…
Stade Louis-II, February 3, 2021. While OGC Nice seemed to be heading for a victory in the Riviera derby on the ground of AS Monaco, Jeff Reine-Adélaïde went out on a stretcher in the 94th minute following a poor support. The Aiglon for a season, on loan from Olympique Lyonnais, was writhing in pain while holding his knee. Verdict: rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament of the left knee, an injury he had already contracted in the right leg with the Rhone club in December 2019. It took him almost 13 months to recover completely and thus make his return in the competition at the beginning of March on the lawn of Lorient (4-1 victory for OL).
In an interview given to The Teamthe former captain of the France Espoirs team confided that his passion for football allowed him to hold on psychologically during his long period of recovery: “Despite the injury, I watched football all the time on TV, L1, L2, England… And then the family helps to stay the course, too. The hardest part was the recovery with OL last summer. I saw the others going to train and I was all alone with the physiotherapists suffering. Then going to the stadium for six months to watch them play is really complicated. Complicated to feel helpless.”
“Stop? It crossed my mind”
Still in the columns of the French sports daily, the 24-year-old speaks about his period of doubt, which he was able to get through thanks to his entourage, whether at OGC Nice and OL: “At the beginning, it’s sadness. It hurts very, very badly to get injured when you are in good shape and you have just made a lot of effort to come back. Then there is a questioning phase. Will I still be able to come back? Then it’s passion that takes over and we get back to work. But we fall all the way down at the time of the recurrence. At that time, the staff and my teammates helped me a lot by surrounding me with positive vibes.
During this long way of the cross, this uncertainty felt even led him to consider a hasty end to his career, before finally ruling out this heavy decision thanks to his state of mind: “I have to say, it crossed my mind, I had it in the back of my mind. Afterwards, I have a winning mentality, not a losing one, that’s why it just crossed my mind. But I got up because I put things into perspective a lot, I said to myself that there was worse than me. Of course it’s hard to get injured and to have surgery, but during my convalescence I had time to get involved in associations and I saw children who no longer had parents, or who were disabled. It made me want to get there. I am lucky to be able to play football, so I could not stay in this slump.
