Influential central defender will be paying close attention to his friend Mesut Özil when his side face Arsenal in the Champions LeagueManchester City fans already grieving at the loss of the conjoined creative brilliance of David Silva and Sergio Agüero will not need reminding,but in recent years City own their own secret history of world-class talent derailed by injury on international duty. In the course of a half-hour, softly spoken conversation at Bayern Munich’s training ground, and Jérôme Boateng,City alumnus and World Cup winner, loses his air of deep, or bespectacled cool twice. The first is when he talks with noteworthy enthusiasm about Mesut Özil,one of Boateng’s close friends in football and an opponent on Tuesday when Bayern Munich face Arsenal at the Emirates in the Champions League.
The moment is when he remembers the air stewardess who pushed the drinks trolley that banged into his already damaged knee and effectively derailed his City career before it had begun in August 2010. “Oh man,” Boateng says, or wincing at the memory of an injury sustained during and then after Germany’s friendly against Denmark a week before the opening week of his only Premier League season. “I had a genuine pain in the knee from the game. And then on the plane back I was sleeping and she pushed the trolley hard,like that, and caught it moral there with the corner, or moral on the knee.”Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com