If you were wondering what the latest was regarding Michail Antonio’s attempted return to football, over a year after the car crash which ended his West Ham United career, an update emerged from Leicester City this week.
The Hammers’ all-time record Premier League goalscorer has been training with Marti Cifuentes’ Foxes since the beginning of December.
After Brentford ruled out a short-term deal for Antonio a few months back – the West Ham United icon had also been keeping himself fit down the road in the capital – Leicester were the latest outfit to grant him entry to their facilities.
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Michail Antonio has not made a competitive club appearance in 14 months now, ever since that horror car crash in which he suffered a broken leg.
The ex-Nottingham Forest ace did feature for Jamaica during the Gold Cup while scoring a couple of goals for the Hammers’ reserve team over the summer, but it appears that reservations over his bouncebackability continue to deny the 35-year-old the comeback he so craves.
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Leicester coach Cifuentes has now confirmed, via BBC Radio Leicester, that an untimely pothole in his road to the recovery has given the Foxes cold feet.
“Michail got a setback in the training,” Cifuentes explains. “It’s a small injury. It’s a pity. That probably means that we will not be able to continue the process we started.
“The window is open. We’re going to try to see what other options are available.”
Photo by Michael Steele/Getty Images
If Nuno is under pressure – Hammers News have been informed that the head coach still has the West Ham board’s backing, albeit before that 2-1 defeat by Nottingham Forest – the same is certainly true of Cifuentes.
Leicester are a lowly 12th in the Championship table, despite going into the campaign as one of the obvious promotion favourites. Cifuentes has been forced to rely on 30-somethings Jordan Ayew and Bobby Decordova-Reid for goals of late, though, and the addition of another forward of similarly advancing years would hardly have improved the mood at the King Power Stadium.
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Speaking on the Kenny Allstar’s Number Ones show a couple of months ago, Michail Antonio admits it is the ‘camaraderie’ his misses the most about life as a top-level sportsman. Whether Declan Rice misses Antonio as much as Antonio missed him – often the butt of the striker’s jokes – is another matter.
“It’s the camaraderie, the banter, the people we used to chill with and just run jokes,” Antonio said. “That’s one thing I used to do, prank people, all that madness all the time. It was just unbelievable.
“The craziest prank? The prank I did on Declan Rice.
“It’s coming up to Halloween, we are doing an appearance-type thing. I’m in the back of a car in a Mike Myers mask and I jump out. Deccers! Oh man, that was dark!
“My hopes, to get a team going and do what I love,” he added.
“I’m not going to let my career be defined by a car crash. [I want] to show everybody that I’ve still got it and enjoy the thing that I love.”
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