Leipzig forward Justin Kluivert has recounted the most dramatic moment in his short professional career. The 21-year-old winger remembers that such a horrible episode occurred on July 8, 2017. That day Ajax played a friendly against Werner Bremen. In the 71st minute, when Ajax lost 2-1, Abdelhak Nouri, a footballer for the Dutch club, fell to the grass and lost consciousness while convulsing. Immediately, he was transferred to a hospital where he remained in an induced coma. The match was immediately suspended. Five days later, Ajax reported that Nouri had suffered “severe and permanent” brain damage. This ailment caused the Dutch player to hang up his boots when he was only 20 years old.
Almost four years have passed since that event, but Justin Kluivert, who was in the field at the time, bitterly remembers that tremendous episode and describes it as “the worst moment of my life.” The player on loan from Roma at Leipzig still suffers when he looks back on it. “I was in shock, I couldn't believe it. One second you are with him in the field making jokes and the next everything is different. Everything was so incredibly fast. After that he wanted to be alone. I am a person who deals with these types of emotional events alone. I thought a lot, I was reminded of the many wonderful moments we shared with him. I learned again in a new way that you have to value life because it can change from one moment to another, “the son of former Barcelona player Patrick Kluivert told Goal.
In August 2018, a year after the accident, the former footballer came out of a coma and regained the ability to communicate moving his mouth and eyebrows, but until last year he was not able to return home, where he is cared for by his family. Justin Kluivert and Nouri maintain a great friendship and have already seen each other on several occasions.