Michail Antonio: Ex-West Ham forward on move to Qatar side Al‑Sailiya

Antonio shattered his femur in four different places after his Ferrari spun off the road and crashed into a tree in Epping Forest during Storm Darragh.

Antonio, who was supported by West Ham throughout his rehabilitation, reiterates that he does not remember the crash and says his “family lived it more”.

He details how he had to learn to walk, then run and jump again, adding: “The hardest part wasn’t the recovery. It was the knockbacks for me.”

The forward held talks with Brentford and Leicester City over proposed transfers but those deals did not materialise.

He said: “When I found out I’d torn my calf the day before signing for Brentford, I laid in bed for two days.

“First day, I was just crying. The second day, I just didn’t want to get out of bed. I thought ‘I’m back where I want to be, I’m back in the Premier League’. And then it happened again with Leicester.

“I was meant to return to Leicester but they didn’t want me back in because they didn’t want a relapse on their books. So I trained alone for a week and then went into Charlton.”

Antonio held exploratory talks with the Championship club over a pay-as-you-play deal, before choosing to move to Qatar instead.

Mental resilience has always been a theme of Antonio’s career, having been rejected by the likes of Brentford and Queens Park Rangers as a teenager, needing to go from non-league Tooting and Mitcham in south London, aged 12 to 18, to the Premier League by climbing the English football pyramid.

“It wasn’t until I was going through a divorce that I started therapy,” he said. “Therapy made me realise there are a lot of things you experience in life, but you never really live the moments. Like with Leicester – I was numb to it, but numbing isn’t dealing with it.

“Not until you speak to someone – not someone who gives their opinion, but someone who helps you understand what’s going on – that’s when you realise these moments are key.”