It is not just on the pitch that footballers sustain injuries.
What follows is an unusual tale . . .
Before Jerome Boateng became a world-class defender, before he established himself at Bayern Munich and just when he had started playing for the Germany national team, he was signed by Manchester City.
At that time, City were still building a squad after spending huge amounts of money and they had paid approximately £10.5m to Hamburg SV for young Boateng’s services.
However, fate had other plans for him.
He had injured a tendon in his knee on international duty with Germany and was flying home when disaster struck.
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As luck would have it, he was involved in a collision with a drinks trolley on the flight and it aggravated his injury even further.
The injury ruled him out for a month and he couldn’t start his season until the end of September.
“I imagined my start at City to be quite different, of course,” Boateng said.
Of course, he lasted only a year at City as he wished to move to Bayern to improve his chances of playing for the national team.
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