Zinho Vanheusden retired last November. He looks back on that day when he knew everything was stopping.
Zinho Vanheusden has suffered so many injuries during his career that listing them here would be too long. This fall’s was one too many. “I no longer saw any other way out. It became a fight that I could no longer win. However, I did everything I could. Physically, my body had been begging me to stop for years. Mentally, you want to continue. Because football is the love of my life,” he explains to DAZN.
He will therefore have hung up his boots in the Spanish third division: “I left for Marbella because after these problems I wanted to be alone with my family, enjoy football away from everything and everyone. Everything was going well until the third day of the championship, when my knee gave out again. I immediately knew it was the cruciate ligament. I then decided that it would stop there: you have to recover physically but also mentally after that.”
A mentally tested
He knew straight away that he wouldn’t come back from this new cruciate ligament rupture: “It was in training. The doctors and physiotherapists were there, on the pitch. I took the physiotherapist’s phone and called my wife. I told her it was over.”
Zinho Vanheusden has taken a lot on himself in the last few months: “I hit rock bottom much deeper than I let on. I was raised to be taught that if you work hard, everything will always work out in the end. Fall down, keep going, get up again. But everyone has a limit. And at certain times, I reached mine.”
Already before his departure for Spain, he reflected several times: “I have already thought about stopping several times. But I told myself so to give myself a way out. Because I wanted to continue.” Love of the game, all the way.
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