The sad fact about any manager who spends a long time in the game is that they will witness a fair few nasty injuries. Arsene Wenger spent over two decades at Arsenal, between 1996 and 2018, and had plenty of good times in north London.
Indeed, the Frenchman won three Premier League titles and seven FA Cups with the Gunners. Sadly, however, his time with the club seemed to regularly be punctuated with shock injuries.
Stars like Abou Diaby, Jack Wilshere, Theo Walcott and Tomas Rosicky all spring to mind as talented footballers who could have achieved even more under Wenger had it not been for their repeated fitness struggles. Players such as Eduardo and Aaron Ramsey also suffered horror leg breaks while representing Arsenal.
Despite these unfortunate former Gunners providing plenty of competition, there is one other incident that stuck in Wenger's mind as the worst injury he ever saw. The unfortunate player in question was Santi Cazorla.
Santi Cazorla's Horror Injury
Fears he would never play again or even lose a leg
The incredible thing is that it wasn't even that bad an injury to begin with. He picked up a knock in a friendly against Chile in September 2013, and that began a culmination of problems over the next five years.
The Spaniard cracked a bone in an ankle, suffered a knee ligament injury in November 2015 and played in increasing pain until facing Ludogorets in October 2016. At that point, the pain was so bad, Cazorla was left in tears and knew he needed surgery, but that was really only the beginning of the misery.
His skin had deteriorated and split open. Infection then hi. Cazorla told the Guardian: “I picked it up in the operating theatre and then there was the fact that the wound was open. I’d work on the bike and a couple of stitches would come out. Because it was an open wound, bacteria can enter, so another bug gets in.
"At night, a yellow liquid would come out. Every time they sewed me up, it split again; more liquid. They did a skin graft but they didn’t see what was inside – the bacteria eating away, eating away. They never found out which bacteria it was.
“They’d said to me: ‘Don’t worry about playing football, concentrate on regaining a normal life, being able to play with your son or go for a stroll.’ But I didn’t attach too much importance to that because by then I’d already decided to come to Spain, where they told me completely different things.
“I’d got tired – I’d gone through two or three months of operations. I went to Vitoria the next day and that’s when they found the bacteria – two in the tendon and another in the bone.
“They didn’t know how much of the tendon the infection had eaten. Mikel [Sanchez, the surgeon] said: ‘I’m going to have to open you up until I find the tendon.’ They told me they’d have to open, open, open, open and when they did, they saw I had lost 10cm. I’d been lucky, they said, it could have been more. When he had to rebuild the tendon, he realised how bad a condition the bone was in. He could put his finger in it. It was like Plasticine. That’s even more dangerous.”
He would ultimately endure eight operations, and after contracting gangrene, it was feared that he might never walk again or could even lose the affected leg. Luckily this didn't happen but the recovery process required a skin graft, with the skin sourced from Cazorla's left forearm where a tattoo of his daughter's name had featured.
Highlighting just how awful the injury was, with Cazorla yet to recover, Wenger claimed in 2017 that it was the worst injury he'd ever seen. He explained:
"It is the worst injury (I have seen).
"It started with a pain in the achilles and it has gone from worse to worse and I must say I know how much Santi loves to play football and loves to be out there every day and I feel very sorry for what happened to him, because it is unbelievable."
At the time, there were doubts about whether Cazorla would ever play again. Unable to even put them fully to bed, Wenger replied: "Let's not talk about that, but I hope you are wrong."
Arsenal's coach Arsene Wenger (R) instructs substitute team captain Thierry Henry (L) what to do after Patrick Vieira was sent off with a red card against PSV Eindhoven Related
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Cazorla is Still Playing in His 40s
Making up for lost time after 636 days injured
This was in 2017 but now approaching a decade later, Cazorla had overcome all odds to still be playing. As if making up for the lost time of that injury (which kept him out for 636 days), the Spaniard has enjoyed a wonderful time in the prolonged twilight of his career.
He returned to former club Villarreal in 2018, and picked up 10 assists in his debut season, the third-most in the league. He then spent three years with Al Sadd in Qatar before re-joining childhood team Real Oviedo in 2023.
He plays for the lowest fee possible, receiving the minimum salary, €91,000 a season. Still starring for the team in his 40s, Cazorla would play a vital role – scoring in the semi-final and then final – as Oviedo earned promotion via the play-offs back into La Liga for the first time in 24 years.