Injuries are a hazard of the job for footballers, but not every injury occurs on the pitch during a match or while training.
Top pros might be supremely fit and have the physique of a Greek god, but you never know what’s around the corner, ready to tear your ACL when you least expect it.
Chelsea star Cole Palmer has, thankfully, not suffered anything so serious this week, but his latest setback was certainly unexpected. The playmaker stubbed his toe at home, potentially breaking it in the process.
Between this and his love for chippy chips, Palmer might be the most relatable player in the entire Premier League.
“I wake up many times in the night to go to the toilet, I hit my head and leg and everything. It can happen,” Enzo Maresca said. Look, it happens to the best of us.
The weirdest football injuries:
David Batty
A hard nut was David Batty, but the former Newcastle United player was no match for his three-year-old daughter’s tricycle, which she crashed into his leg while he was recovering from an ankle ligament injury in 1999. The collision damaged his Achilles tendon, putting the Leeds United man on the shelf for a few extra weeks.
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Dave Beasant
There is a well-worn path of goalkeepers injuring themselves by dropping things on their foot, which is deeply ironic when you think about it. Wimbledon’s FA Cup-winning hero Dave Beasant is one such goalie, after he dropped a jar of salad cream, severing tendons in his big toe in 1993.
At the time Beasant was playing for Chelsea under the management of Glenn Hoddle, and the injury effectively ended his Blues career.
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Darren Barnard
Accidents happen. But slipping on dog piss? That’s just hilarious. It wasn’t so funny for former Chelsea player Darren Barnard though, who managed to tear knee ligaments after falling over his mutt’s urine in the kitchen.
Playing for Barnsley in 1999 when it happened, the injury kept the midfielder out for five months.
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Santiago Canizares
Returning to our series of Goalkeepers Dropping Things On Their Feet, Santiago Canizares let slip of a bottle of aftershave in 2002, severing a tendon.
It was bad enough that the Valencia goalkeeper lost consecutive Champions League finals, but the peroxide haired goalie missed out on the World Cup.
“I do not consider myself to be unlucky by any means,” he said at the time, but it effectively ended his reign as Spain’s number one, losing out to a certain Iker Casillas.
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Marco Asensio
They say modern footballers are too soft these days, and Marco Asensio did nothing to combat that notion when the Real Madrid youngster was forced to miss the first Champions League game of the 2017/18 season due to… an infected pimple on his leg after shaving. Honestly.
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