Wolfsburg midfielder Josuha Guilavogui has told L'Equipe he might have ended up in a wheelchair after breaking his neck in a freak on-pitch accident in the summer.
Guilavogui, 26, sustained a triple fracture of his neck vertebrae during a preseason friendly between Wolfsburg and Sporting Lisbon in July.
"It's not a classic football injury. It's rather one rugby players suffer in a ruck," Guilavogui said. "I heard a really good crack, and it wasn't a finger cracking!
"I wasn't really scared at first, because I didn't know where it had come from. I felt pain, and I was able to move onto my back. I turned my head to the left without a problem. But to the right, I couldn't do the full movement. I understood then that something had happened."
Guilavogui added: "The doctors I saw in Portugal, Germany and Dr Morel in Lyon told me clearly: a few centimetres more, and it was a wheelchair. It was a close-run thing, so I can consider myself fortunate."
A practicing Christian, Guilavogui revealed he and former Saint-Etienne teammate Bafetimbi Gomis chartered a plane to go to the Catholic holy site in Lourdes to pray after the injury.
The France international made his return to action last week, playing a half in Wolfsburg's friendly against German second-tier side Union Berlin.
"I wasn't afraid, but there was a little anxiety," Guilavogui said of his return. "I asked myself, for example, how I would handle the challenges during the game. I did 45 minutes, but a dead leg prevented me playing the whole game as had been planned.
"During my comeback game, there was a moment when I jumped and my opponent didn't. I landed on my back and stayed on the ground a few seconds. I said to myself, 'What happened? Is everything OK?' The technical staff held their breath on the bench. But in the end, there was no pain."