"I was 20 and playing for Dortmund when three pipe bombs went off right next to our bus on the way to a Champions League match. A lot of young people probably would not even believe that it happened, or how bad it was, but it marked us all."

"There was a deafening noise, and then I remember the bus nearly tipping over. I looked behind me and saw blood on the floor. Smoke, screams. I remember being at the hospital later that night, waiting for Marc Bartra, who had his wrist badly cut up.

"The next day, someone told me that a huge piece of shrapnel was lodged in the headrest of the seat next to Marc. My usual seat. That day, the seat was empty.

"My legs were feeling a bit tight, and the seats in the front reclined. So I sat up there instead, and it may have saved my life. So yeah, I just have this belief that things happen for a reason."

He said: "The specialist who did the scan had never seen a stress fracture in that part of the foot. He'd been doing this for 30 years. He had called five of the best specialists in the world, and none of them had seen it either.

"Nobody knew how my foot would recover, or if it would recover at all. Part of me feared that I would never play football again. I put all the meat on the barbecue, as we say in Spain. They told me they could drill two screws into my foot to give it support. I was like, vamos, put 'em in."