Luke Shaw is back in the Manchester United team a year on from breaking his leg.
The 21-year-old was establishing himself as United’s first choice left back when he suffered a horrific leg break during a Champions League tie at PSV Eindhoven last September.
He had surged into the opposition box when he was brought down by Hector Moreno. It was immediately clear that it was a bad one. He was given oxygen on the pitch before he was carried off with what turned out to be a double leg break.
And now Shaw has revealed that he has changed his mind about the challenge that put him out of action for a year.
“At the time I thought: ‘Give him the benefit of the doubt, it wasn’t actually a bad tackle,’” he told the Guardian. “But the more I’ve seen it since, the more I think: ‘You know, that was actually a really bad challenge.’
“To be fair to him, he did come to say sorry. He came to the hospital and I saw him face to face in my room. I was quite sympathetic at the time – ‘Aah, look, you can come in, it’s fine’ – but at the end of the day it was me lying there with a broken leg, and I went through so many bad times since then I did start thinking about it some more. It really annoys me they [Uefa] gave him man-of-the-match. Some people were saying it was a good challenge, others were saying it was a bad challenge. For me, it’s a bad challenge.”
Shaw says his immediate reaction was anger that we would be out of action for so long. The pain came later, he said.
(Photo by Stu Forster/Getty Images)“Then, that night, lying in hospital, I swear to God the pain was something else. 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.’”
But after a full pre-season under his belt, Shaw is back and has played in United’s two opening Premier League games for Jose Mourinho.
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