ACHIPOFF THE OLDBLOCK

At the beginning of the season, Marcus Thuram was riding a tsunami of momentum. He’d just participated in the summer’s European Championship, his place in France’s star-studded squad earned by two years of fine form and continuous development with German giants Borussia Monchengladbach. At 24, he was one of the most sought-after young forwards in Europe and Internazionale’s primary transfer target.

Then it came to a screeching halt. “I didn’t realise at first,” Thuram says of the knee injury he suffered in the first half of an eventual 4-0 defeat to Bayer Leverkusen in August. “When you’re in the course of the game, you always think positive and think you can restart the game. I asked the doctor if I could try ten or15 minutes. After three or four minutes, I felt like it was too dangerous to continue, so I asked for the sub.

“Later that night, I felt the pain increasing, because my adrenaline was down, and the next morning they told me it was quite serious.”

Damage to the medial collateral ligament was the diagnosis. He’d be out for up to 12