In an interview for the Spanish media AS, Pedro Ruiz, now a former OM striker, talks about how he came to retire at just 24 years old, after suffering serious injuries. He also thanks Pablo Longoria for giving him hope.
“I would give an arm to be able to play five minutes.” In a long interview with Madrid media AS, Pedro Ruiz, OM striker who recently retired at the age of 24 after a series of serious injuries, explains how he came to make this decision and explains the role that Pablo Longoria played in his convalescence.
Victim of a rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament and both menisci (internal and external) of the left knee on January 26, 2020 while playing in the reserve team of Real Madrid, the Spaniard, who has not played since on November 20, 2021, explains that he was forced to stay on the field despite his injury.
An injury aggravated with the Real reserve
“I had just scored two goals against PSG in the Youth League, I felt very good, and it happened to me with Castilla (it happened during the match against Penya Deportiva, January 26, 2020). On a clearance from my central defender, I was in the duel with Copete, who is now in Mallorca, I jumped with a knee cramp and when I stretched it, everything broke. The cross, the. internal meniscus and external meniscus.
“Despite everything, Raúl told me to continue playing, that I had nothing even if I cried, and I told him: 'Do you want to see if I have anything or not?' And stubborn as I am I played another five minutes But I remember that they scored a goal and that when it was time to take the throw-in, my knee completely dislocated. came out, I said to him: 'And there, you see that I have something?'”
“It’s thanks to Pablo Longoria”
Pedro Ruiz then explains his interminable convalescence, his resumption of training too painful to continue, his relapses… “Doctor Leyes, the surgeon from Madrid, told me that it was the worst knee injury he had never seen in his life,” he recalls. At the end of his contract in June 2021, he was transferred to Olympique de Marseille, where he “sees the light”: “It’s thanks to Pablo Longoria (the president of the Marseille club), who already wanted me at Valence. owe him a lot. He gave me life.”
“I needed to leave Madrid, I needed a change of scenery, it was too many months doing the same thing… Marseille loaned me the first year to NEC Nijmegen, in the Netherlands, and I felt like I was coming back to life. I made my debut in a friendly match against a Bundesliga team and I scored… I was in pain, but I was going to be okay. training on a bike was paradise for me”, remembers the man who paid a beautiful tribute to the city of Nijmegen in his end-of-career post on Instagram.
“I can’t run from here to there.”
Before injuring my cruciate again during training and having another operation: “In Marseille, they saw that I had a strained cruciate, it was not broken but it did not do its job. work.” After another year off work, he was unable to recover, even though he was being followed by a scientific physiotherapist.
“I stayed there for a month, from eight in the morning to midnight,” he recalls. “Then two more weeks. He told me, 'Pedro, if I can't regenerate your cartilage, no one can.' We spent a lot of money, but nothing worked. My problem is not that I can't play at a high level, it's that I can't run from here to there.” Even today, despite his retirement, he explains that he suffers from bone bruises due to two knee bones colliding.
