MUCH gets said about the glamorous side of being a professional footballer. The cars, the watches, the expensive clothes and jewellery, nice houses in affluent areas and a lifestyle where pamper outweighs pauper. But there is also a dark side that the average football fan does not see.
Injury is without doubt the most difficult part of being a footballer – or a professional sports person in general for that matter – as not being fit quite simply means you cannot do your job. It can be a long way back to full health from more serious injuries and that is something Demi Mitchell has endured in the past year at Exeter City. It was Halloween 2023 and during City’s 3-2 Carabao Cup fourth round clash defeat to Middlesbrough when Mitchell collapsed to the ground in agony and with no one in close proximity.
The uncomfortable feeling in his knee forced him off, but no one – least of all Mitchell – could have known it would be almost a year to the day since we would see him in a City shirt again, after such an innocuous fall. “I was playing well last season before I got injured,” Mitchell recalls. “I remember I cut inside and just got my studs caught in the ground but, at the time, I thought someone had snapped me.
“I shouted, thinking it was a free kick but, when I looked back, I saw there was no one near me. I knew straight away I had done something serious, but was hoping it wasn’t my ACL. But these things happen in football, you have to bounce back and that is t.