It’s been a long time coming and, but for the excellence and quick thinking of club doctors and medical staff may not have happened at all, but Wolverhampton Wanderers’ Raul Jimenez is finally back out doing what he does best on a football pitch.
The Mexican striker knows how close he came to never playing the game again, but the fact that he is has clearly struck a chord with opponents.
Against Midlands rivals Leicester at the weekend, some of the Foxes players took the time to wish him well, and that clearly wasn’t lost on Jimenez.
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“It was really good to be back again,” he said to media after the game, cited by Leicestershire Live.
“I remember at a corner Vardy came to me to congratulate me, and Soyuncu and Maddison and most of the other Leicester players came to me in different parts of the game too. I felt really good about that.
“They said they were really happy to see me back on the pitch, that it was an honour to be there playing with me in my first match back.”
Playing with a head guard in place to minimise the risk of further injury, there was certainly no reticence from Jimenez’s point of view regarding getting stuck in.
If he can get back to the form he was in before his injury, firing Wolves to a European placing isn’t beyond him.