Nwankwo Kanu Was Once Banned from Playing Football

DBasia.news – The light in Nwankwo Kanu’s eyes dimmed remembering the difficult times when he moved from AFC Ajax to FC Internazionale. He just has two pre-season friendly matches and suddenly asked to have a rest. His name was eliminated from the upcoming match. No explanation and he saw the news on the television the next day.

“What they reported was that I had an issue with my heart and couldn’t play football any more,” Kanu says. “It was in the national papers in Italy as well. That’s how I found out – through the news. Later on, Inter came to tell me that, yeah, this was the situation. It should not have been like that. At that moment, everything was upside down for me.”

Kanu was lucky, the aortic valve problem recorded in the medical review and he owed the continuation of his career to a specialist in Cleveland, Ohio. Previously, a doctor from United Kingdom and the Netherlands said that he couldn’t play football anymore. But a specialist from Cleveland could conduct the surgery to fix the problem. The hope arose.

Kanu won three Eredivisie titles and one Champions League with Ajax, helped Nigeria achieved the gold medal of the 1996 Summer Olympic. He was also the champion of UEFA in Inter before moving to Arsenal (Premier League runner-up and two FA Cup). He performed 86 times for Nigeria, three times in the World Cup, and two times as Africa’s Best Player.

“What I went through after my transfer to Inter made me stronger,” Kanu said. “There is no bigger test than when you are in between life and death so, if you can come up from there, you can handle anything. It gave me that push to go out and do whatever I had to do. I know the pain that I went through as an adult, so imagine how it is for kids.”

Kanu needed the second surgery in 2014 to improve the same valve and weakened him. But the surgery didn’t necessarily put him on a long break. In contrary, he dedicated himself to highlight the cardiac health, including in the football professional.