In 2011, when Dries Mertens was preparing to leave Utrecht for PSV Eindhoven, he saw one of his teammates seriously injured in training: the Romanian Mihai Nesu. The club’s left-back paid a heavy price for a bad fall after a “normal tackle, as there are hundreds of in training”, as Dries Mertens himself described to Sport-Foot Magazine.
“Mihai fell back badly and an ambulance picked him up. He couldn’t move, but that didn’t stop us from thinking he would play again soon.” This will not be the case since the player’s spinal cord was affected. Nesu has been paralyzed since that day and lives in a wheelchair.
Following this accident, Dries Mertens and Mihai Nesu got closer. The Red Devil also financially supports the player’s foundation. “Thanks to this foundation and his faith, he found new energy” Mertens explained to our colleagues.
And at the start of the year, good news arrived for Mihai and her family. By dint of perseverance, the former player is now able to feed himself independently, as shown in this video.
