This time last year, Pablo Mari had just been allowed home after undergoing surgery — but this was not the sort of hospital visit that footballers expect during their career.
The Spanish defender had been stabbed in the back during a frenzied attack at a Milan shopping centre in which six people were injured, one of whom was killed.
Mari was in the wrong place at the wrong time. While shopping in a busy Carrefour supermarket with his wife and son, a 46-year-old man came from behind and stabbed him in the back.
The former Arsenal player had been oblivious to the danger until he felt the sharp pain. Once aware of what he was in the middle of, he had to witness the attacker launch himself at others who escaped less fortunate than him.
It was an ordeal that left Mari needing surgery to reconstruct two injured muscles. The surgeon credited his muscle mass as his saving grace, which meant that the knife — grabbed from the supermarket shelf — did not pass through the rib cage and puncture his lung.
That is the small margin between life and death which means Mari is still here.
“I want to say thank you to everybody. Not only here in Italy but in Spain, the UK and everywhere else,” Mari tells The Athletic.
“The messages of support I received were really impressive. People I have…
