There are few feel-good stories in world football this season as heartwarming as that of Raul Jimenez at Fulham.
In November 2020, the Mexican striker – then playing for Wolves – suffered a horrific head injury after colliding with Arsenal’s David Luiz.
Jimenez was stretchered off the field with an oxygen mask and taken to a London hospital, where he underwent emergency surgery on a fractured skull and a life-threatening brain bleed.
“They told me it was like a miracle to be there,” he previously revealed of conversations with doctors after the surgery.
“[There was] the skull fracture, the bone broke and there was a little bit of bleeding inside the brain. It was pushing my brain to the inside and that is why the surgery had to be quick. It was a really good job by the doctors.”
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Jimenez was hospitalised for ten days and had no memory of the match – probably a good thing, given the sickening nature of that head clash.
“You start hearing ‘code red’,” then-Wolves boss Nuno Espirito Santo said after the match.
“It was a bad moment. What was the reaction? Panic, panic panic. You could see the faces on the teammates. It was a serious situation. It’s awful and terrible.”
The incident was also a major wake-up call in football’s treatment of head injuries, with Luiz allowed to play until halftime despite receiving seven stitches on a nearly eight centimetre wound – with blood continuing to seep through the bandaging as the match continued.
England great Alan Shearer said on BBC’s Match of the Day: “If David Luiz has passed all the protocols like Arsenal say he has, how on earth is he allowed back on to the pitch with a wound that is dripping down his face?”
“We’re talking about life and death and players’ careers ending,” he added. “Football needs to get real and wake up. It needs to get serious, not next month, now. This has been going on for far too long.”
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Doctors told Jimenez that returning to football after his major traumatic brain injury would be risky.
But after nine gruelling months of recovery, he returned to the Premier League – though he now trains and plays with a headguard, effectively a headband with added padding to protect the impacted area.
At the time of his injury, Manchester United and Liverpool were lining up January transfer offers. Other European giants like Barcelona and Juventus were also strongly interested in landing the Wolves’ fan-favourite.
The season before that injury, he had scored 27 goals and added 10 assists. The one before that was 17 goals and eight assists.
But after his return to the game the following season, he managed just six goals in 34 league games.
There were strong suggestions that his heavy-duty headguard was impacting his peripheral vision and stifling his ability to read the ball, particularly in the air.
“Sometimes, the trajectory of the ball meant there was a difference for Raul with the old headgear,” said then-Wolves boss Bruno Lage.
But even a swap to a new headgear model – that only had extra padding where specifically needed – did not produce success, with Jimenez failing to score in his 15 league appearances last season.
Much of that was down to Wolves’ service and the player’s role in the team, but Jimenez was nevertheless a shadow of his former self.
Fulham took a punt on signing the 32-year-old this season for £5 million, well below the £30 million Wolves had paid in 2019 (then a club record).
But finally, the scar-faced warrior looks to be returning to his best.
He opened the scoring in the 5-0 win over West Ham – with his head no less – to lift Fulham to the top half of the table, after bagging a brace in their 5-0 win over Nottingham Forest.
He now has four strikes in five games – having not scored before that run since March 2022, a full 33 league games before.
Fulham manager Marco Silva said: “It wasn’t easy to be the top player from the big injury he had. He was playing with a weight on his back, we never lost trust in him.
“He started well this season without scoring. We have to provide and we did it.”
Jimenez has played a crucial role in igniting Fulham’s season after a sluggish start. Silva’s team scored just 10 times in their first 12 league games. In the last four matches, they’ve scored an incredible 16 goals – including back-to-back 5-0 victories.
Jimenez might never get that big-money move to Barcelona, Liverpool or Manchester United.
But it’s impossible to watch him score again – and sometimes celebrate by rotating his headgear to sport a pirate-like eyepatch – and not be feel grateful to witness a Premier League miracle.