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

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

Antonio, who has been supported by West Ham throughout his rehabilitation, reiterated that he had no recollection of the accident and said his “family has lived longer”.

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 recoils for me.”

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

He said: “When I found out I had torn my calf the day before I signed for Brentford I was in bed for two days.

“The first day I was just crying. The second day I didn’t want to get out of bed. I thought, ‘I’m back where I want to be, back in the Premier League.'” Then the same thing happened at Leicester.

“I was supposed to go back to Leicester but they didn’t want me back because they didn’t want their book to go bad. So I trained alone for a week and then I went to Charlton.”

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

Mental toughness has always been a theme of Antonio’s career; Rejected by the likes of Brentford and Queens Park Rangers as a teenager, he was forced to climb the English football pyramid to the Premier League from non-league Tooting and Mitcham in South London between the ages of 12 and 18.

“I didn’t start therapy before the divorce,” she said. “Therapy made me realize that there are a lot of things you experience in life but you never really live those moments. Like at Leicester – I was numb to it but numbness isn’t about dealing with it.”

“Until you talk to someone—not someone who speaks their mind, but someone who helps you understand what’s going on—that’s when you realize these moments matter.”