Swiss football's most unlucky player "I cried through the night"

In an interview with blue Sport, Miguel Peralta talks about a football career with five cruciate ligament ruptures, eight operations and the end of his career at 25. In the end, however, his love of football wins out.

We are in the FC Aarau office. Here, in the belly of the Brügglifeld stadium, is Miguel Peralta's new workplace. Just a few meters away from the pitch where the former winger made his professional debut in 2015. However, his career has not always gone according to plan, with Peralta suffering so many injuries that he is probably the unluckiest player in Swiss football.

The Spaniard tore his cruciate ligament five times, which is why he ended his career at Aarau in 2021 at the age of 25. In his seven years at FCA, he made just 49 competitive appearances.

After his retirement, Peralta took a year off. But then he caught the football bug again. He returned to his youth club Schönenwerd-Niedergösgen. He has just returned home from a training camp in Malta: "I was knackered," he explains, pointing out that it was tough because of the training and not because of his excursions into the Maltese nightlife.

He can still feel his right knee. The one in which he tore his cruciate ligament four times. He now plays on the right without the cruciate ligament: "I have to put tape there to keep it in place. You can imagine it like a tank. That way I can play without pain, but I can feel it afterwards."

The fact that it hurts is normal for Peralta: "I've lived with the pain for so many years, it's nothing out of the ordinary for me." When asked when he last played football without pain, he has to think long and hard: "As a professional, you're always in pain. You just live with it." He's not just referring to himself, but says that it's normal as a professional footballer in this contact sport: "You go into tackles and train a lot. It's so much strain on your body. You always have something that hurts somewhere."

After the digression about pain in footballers, Peralta comes back to the actual question and goes way back in his memories: "Completely pain-free? That was probably when I was 14 or 15."

"Why me of all people?"

Peralta suffered his first cruciate ligament rupture at the age of 18. Looking back, he describes it as the most drastic: "I was on loan to FC Baden when I was 18. We had promotion games against Xamax. A week before the game, I signed my first professional contract with Aarau. 15 minutes into the game, I was hit by a ball and it was torn. Then you're 18 and you know you're going to be away for a year."

He was really looking forward to returning to Aarau and playing at Brügglifeld. But he couldn't really realize it at 18: "I cried through many nights and asked myself: 'Why me? A question to which he still has no answer today.

It is still slightly present in the back of his mind that he wonders why it happened to him of all people: "You have so many opinions coming at you. Some say it's genetic, others say you're muscularly unstable or too immobile." In the end, however, it's all about learning to accept the situation: "You have to come to terms with the fact that you're going to be out of action for such a long time. Somehow you have to look ahead and set yourself a goal".

Peralta had to keep setting himself new goals. He has come back from a cruciate ligament rupture four times and says himself: "I can't blame myself." He bears the stamp of the all-time injured player - it's part of his life, but he says: "Sometimes I wish people had asked how I was doing rather than how my knees were doing."

Three general anesthetics in two weeks

When Peralta looks back on all his operations, the memories are a blur. There were simply too many operations to keep track of. In addition to the cruciate ligaments, Peralta also operated on the meniscus four times, twice of which were coupled with the cruciate ligament: "I had seven or eight operations in total."

He remembers one of his injuries particularly well: "Once I got an infection after an operation. That was horror. That was when I reached my mental limit." The memories of that time have also faded - or been repressed: "I can't remember exactly when that was, after the third cruciate ligament rupture or something."

But the complications at the time are still present: "You come home from the operation and think: 'Ok, now you've taken the first step'." Then he suddenly realized that he wasn't feeling well, became feverish and went back to the doctor: "He took blood and saw that it was an infection."

As a result, Peralta was admitted directly to hospital, received another general anesthetic and everything in his knee was flushed out. But the ordeal continued. He was in hospital for a week with antibiotics, then they took blood again and realized that the infection was still there: "General anaesthetic again and flushed out again. After that, I spent another week and a half in hospital until I was finally able to go home."

After three general anesthetics within two weeks, he continued sleepily: "After that, I had to take a strong antibiotic for three months, which always made me fall asleep as soon as I took it. I was pale and lost ten kilograms." A mental coach helped him deal with all the setbacks at the time.

Love greater than the pain

Peralta has now accepted his fate, is turning 30 this year and knows that he was also lucky in his misfortune: "By ending my career early, I was able to return to work earlier." FC Aarau not only supported Peralta throughout his injuries and even extended his contract several times, but also gave him the opportunity to work in the office after his retirement: "They rely on me here and I was able to gain a foothold in something that I also really enjoy."

And why does a 29-year-old ex-footballer, who has suffered five cruciate ligament ruptures and is always in pain, continue to play at amateur level? "I love this sport more than anything, I can't do without football. That's why it outweighs the pain. That's why you sometimes forget about it." After tearing his cruciate ligament for the fifth time in 2021, he took a year off, which didn't do him any good: "I started to crunch during the night, I just didn't have the outlet," says Peralta.

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