Club Brugge will face a special confrontation in the Champions League tomorrow against Aston Villa, a club with a tragic story for Belgian Football legend Luc Nilis.
Nilis, who moved to England after his successful career in Belgium and the Netherlands, played at Aston Villa at the time, where he had to end his career abruptly after a fatal accident on the field. The painful memories of that day remain etched in the minds of many.
It happened on September 9, away at Ipswich Town. “Dion Dublin heads through, and I see the ball falling in the air,” Nilis remembers GvA. “Out of the corner of my eye I see the goalkeeper, Richard Wright, who is not too far from his goal. But the moment I want to hit the ball with my foot, it’s suddenly there.”
“We hit each other with full force; his knee hits my leg.” What followed was a horrific scene: Nilis’ fibula and tibia were in pieces. “The bizarre thing was: I felt no pain and just wanted to get up. But when I saw my leg, I knew it was serious.”
Nilis’ leg suffered an open fracture and he had to be transported immediately. “In the hospital I was immediately anesthetized for an operation, but on the way I felt an intense pain, as if a balloon exploded in my leg. I kept asking for morphine, but kept losing consciousness because of the pain,” he recalls.
The attacker would have to undergo multiple operations and faced serious complications, even threatening amputation. Fortunately, a surgeon who cut his calf specifically to get oxygen to the damaged tissue was able to save his leg.
“That man changed my life. If he hadn’t intervened, I would have lost my leg. I am eternally grateful to him,” says Nilis. In gratitude, he presented the surgeon with an engraved Rolex with his initials and the date of the accident. “It was a small gesture for what he meant to me.”
