Tapped Up [19/11]
Speaking to BBC Radio Lancashire, Jansen said:
“The hunger’s there which was missing. I was so disillusioned with the game. I didn’t enjoy coming into training because things weren’t going as I wanted and I thought that was it.”
The story here is that Jansen, 24 at the time, narrowly missed out on a place in the England squad for the 2002 World Cup, and ended up taking an trip to Rome to get away from it all. Just a few days into his holiday, he was thrown from a motorcycle, and suffered a brain haemorrhage. Jansen was in a coma for four days, and stayed in hospital for a number of months afterwards. Upon his return to his club Blackburn, he struggled to regain fitness, form and, worse of all, his love for the game.
A loan spell at Coventry to regain all three factors wasn’t 100% successful, and for the next 4 years, was a mere shadow of his former self. Sam Allardyce brought him to Bolton in 2006, but again he struggled to maintain the potential many had seen in him when he broke through in the Carlisle squad a decade earlier.
Despite all he had been through, there had been signs that the old Matt Jansen, a cultured forward, was back. Seven months after the accident, in January 2003, he scored twice on his return to the Blackburn starting line-up for an FA Cup tie away to Aston Villa. Later that year came a spectacular goal against Liverpool. Even in his penultimate appearance for Bolton, in February 2006, he won the man-of-the-match award against Arsenal. But while others saw the old magic returning, Jansen saw only doubt.
“I was making basic mistakes, struggling to control balls that a park player could control, I was thinking so much about it, about whether the ball would bobble. It was a snowball effect and I couldn’t deal with it. I was even thinking about it on the way into work. It became a nightmare.”
Within weeks of that man-of-the-match performance against Arsenal, Jansen was walking away from football. He was released 4 months later on his own request.
“I went in and saw Sam Allardyce and said, ‘I can’t do it any more.’ He was brilliant, really sympathetic. He said: ‘If you ever need any help in the future, give me a shout.’ But I needed a clean break.”
At 31, he has returned to train with Blackburn, with new found spark for the game. A Robbie Fowler-esque pay-as-you-play contract is on the table, waiting for him to sign if he wants it.
I’ve only ever met and spoke to a few footballers. Luckily, one was Matty, and I can’t sing his praises as a footballer, and a human, higher. There’s no doubt it’s his last shot, but if anyone ever deserved it, it’s Matty.
Read the full story on the Times website.
