Aston Villa’s Jack Grealish has made an incredible claim that he almost died after freak injury sustained in pre-season.
Aston Villa youngster Jack Grealish has revealed that an incident in pre-season could have cost him his life before the start of the 2017/18 campaign, in quotes via the Mirror.
The Midlands outfit were playing Watford in a pre-season friendly, and Grealish ended up in hospital after a pretty innocuous challenge from ex-Manchester United midfielder Tom Cleverley. However, the challenge had potentially fatal consequences, as the forward later revealed.
“I took a kick to the kidney and it split in two places. It was pouring with blood, internally, for about five hours,” the Villa man said.
”It’s the worst pain I’ve ever been in. I went to Heartlands hospital in Birmingham. They found out what it was and I was rushed to the Queen Elizabeth for an operation. Before it happened, the surgeon had to tell me the consequences of what could happen if it didn’t work.
“He looked me in the eye and said, ‘Jack, you could die’. My reply was, ‘What?’ I was genuinely scared. I was expecting to be back inside a week, but it was three or four months.”
The 22-year-old claimed that the whole ordeal actually had a positive outcome though and spurred him on, stating that it forced him to work hard and to enjoy what he has, because everything can be taken away in an instant.
And his positive attitude has been there for all to see in the run-in to the season, with Grealish putting in exciting performances on a regular basis and finally fulfilling the promise he showed three years ago, during the FA Cup semi-final victory over Liverpool.
The play-maker’s biggest challenge is still to come though, as he will step out at Wembley to face Fulham in the Championship play-off final in front of 40,000 travelling Villa fans on Saturday.
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