Eduardo was lucky

Like a lot of football fans, I ended up watching Saturday night’s Match Of The Day through my fingers, on account of Martin Taylor’s horrific tackle on Eduardo. Fortunately, it looks like the Arsenal number 9 is going to make a full recovery, but his injury got us thinking about some of the other painful moments in football history that we just couldn’t bring ourselves to watch. Here are five of the best or, rather, worst…

1) David Busst (Coventry City v Manchester United, 1996)
Best remembered as The Injury That Made Peter Schmeichel Throw Up, the Coventry defender snapped his tibia and fibula in two during a collision with Brian McClair and Denis Irwin that left his lower right leg twisted back through 90 degrees in an L-shape. It needed 20 operations and, at one point, doctors feared they might have to amputate. Fortunately, Busst made a full recovery, but he never played football again.

2) Henrik Andersen (Denmark v Holland, 1992)
In the semi-final of Euro 92, the Danish defender smashed his left leg open, lunging for the ball with Marco van Basten. Football fans, long accustomed to being told to “look away now if you don’t want to know the result”, did just that as a close-up of a bone sticking out of Andersen’s leg appeared on their screens. The official video of the tournament is still prescribed viewing for Scandinavian medical students.

3) Denis Irwin (Manchester United v Feyenoord, 1997)
The United defender was still digging studs out of his shin weeks after surviving Paul Bosvelt’s heinous tackle. Not unexpectedly, Sir Alex Ferguson leapt from the bench to loudly express his displeasure at the Dutch midfielder, becoming the first person to be heard using the C-word on primetime ITV. The gods of football had their revenge on Bosvelt when he was transferred to Manchester City, a fitting punishment by anyone’s standards.

4) Henrik Larsson (Celtic v Lyon, 1999)
The dreadlocked Swedish striker had to be stretchered off after a horrific injury that left his lower left leg, to use the correct medical term, “all floppy”. Despite the fact that his displaced shinpad made the injury look worse than it really was, Larsson had broken his leg in two places and spent eight months on the sidelines. Perhaps blaming them for his misfortune, he shaved the dreads off soon after.

5) Phil Babb (Liverpool v Chelsea, 1998)
Racing back towards his own goal in a doomed attempt to stop Pierluigi Casiraghi scoring for Chelsea, the Reds defender found himself skidding on his backside across the six-yard box. The irresistible force of Babb’s testicles met the immovable object of the Anfield goalpost, and the results were predictably painful.