Exclusive: Barazite on his injury agony



Just one month after suffering his first major injury, Nacer Barazite has returned to full training with Arsenal.

The talented youngster had played only 25 minutes of competitive first-team football when he went into a fairly innocuous challenge with Blackburn’s David Dunn in the Carling Cup tie at Ewood Park. A little stumble later and the youngster had dislocated his left shoulder.

Being carried off to a standing ovation might have numbed the pain a touch. However Barazite, talking about the injury for the first time, revealed that the state of his shoulder was not what was hurting most.

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“I felt so bad, I was in some pain and I could have cried,” he told Arsenal.com. “Not tears for my shoulder but because I was going to go off. I was there, in the first-team and I was being forced off.

“I had been nervous at the start but I got a few good touches in and I was feeling comfortable. I was on for 20 minutes but it could have been more. I was disappointed to be missing out on game time with the first-team.”

In assessing the challenge, the 17-year-old still appears bemused. Inevitably, frustration resonates in his voice.

“It was a simple case of trying to make a tackle and I lost balance. But it was just a fall, a fall like you do every day in training. This time though as I went down and hit the floor I felt it pop out and I just thought ‘this is not good.’

“The physio was on, it was Gary [Lewin], and I said to him ‘Put it back, I don’t want to come off.’ But he smiled and just said it wasn’t possible.

“Then I knew I had to come off and just felt awful.

“I never thought it would happen to me. I have had the odd little problem, you know, out for a couple of days, but not a big injury like this.”

The Dutchman revealed that football wasn’t the only thing to suffer: “The day after, I was supposed to go back to Holland for my Christmas holiday, but I couldn’t go! I needed to go and see the specialist, to have an MRI scan to see how bad it was.

“Luckily the person I saw said that there was no big damage around the shoulder, to the muscles and other parts, so I didn’t need to have an operation. I would have been out for three months if I needed one so thankfully without it I was out for only one month.”

The positive scan also ensured that a return to his native Arnhem was not postponed for long.

“I managed to get back to Holland,” added Barazite. “But it wasn’t the Christmas I wanted to have. I was in a sling and couldn’t do anything.

“I kept thinking about the game, how I wanted to have finished it and come home to have a nice Christmas, but it was different.”
One suspects Barazite will have a chance to rectify the situation in the not-too-distant future.