‘The Wall is back’: how Courtois won Champions League final fitness race
Two serious knee injuries destroyed his season, but Real Madrid’s talisman always had Wembley on 1 June as a target
The day Thibaut Courtois sustained the injury that might have ended his season before it had begun, he arrived home, bandage covering the whole of his left leg, slowly got out of his car and told the friend waiting there for him: “I’m going to win the Champions League; there’s still time.” Nine months and a second torn ligament later, this time in the other knee, after seemingly endless hours of work, the pain and the fear, and with the help of surgeons, physios and the goalkeeper who took Real Madrid there in his absence, he actually could. And with that, he has won already.
It was 10 August, a morning when, according to his wife, Mishel Gerzig, something just didn’t feel quite right, and two days before Real Madrid’s opening game away at Athletic. In training at Valdebebas, Courtois had pushed out a shot and as he went towards the ball dropping near Rodrygo, something went. Falling to the turf, the screams were unlike anything his teammates had heard, as if a child was sobbing. They knew immediately something was seriously wrong and the diagnosis confirmed it: he had torn the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee. His season, he was initially told, was virtually over.
