It happened in the shower: Xabi Alonso reveals injury he kept secret for decades

Xabi Alonso told the public for the first time about an injury that almost prevented him from playing the 2010 World Cup semi-finals.

Munich – It was without a doubt a picture book career that Xabi Alonso made.

The Spanish midfield strategist won just about every title that is important in football - including the 2010 world championship title with the "Furia Roja".

But an injury actually made his participation in the World Cup semi-final impossible.

The former FC Bayern player told the Spanish sports newspaper

for the first time about an incident shortly before the game that he had kept to himself for over a decade.

Hours before the duel with Germany, Alonso suffered a deep cut in his knee - in the shower.

Ex-Bayern star Xabi Alonso injured himself in the shower before the World Cup semifinals

The now 40-year-old was always under the shower before games.

He also followed this ritual on the morning of the semifinals.

It then happened when getting out of the shower: the glass wall broke, a piece of glass pierced deep through the footballer's knee and turned the bathroom into a bloody crime scene.

"Blood is always shocking, but in this case I was more shocked that the muscle tissue was showing," recalls Alonso.

But he didn't feel any external pain, only an internal pain: He feared that he would not be able to play in two of the most important games of his career.

Xabi Alonso ahead of World Cup semifinals: "Doctor, I have to play"

His team doctor at the time, Dr.

Cota remembers the situation clearly.

"All he managed to do was plead with me to say, 'Doctor, for God's sake, do whatever you want, but I have to play.'" He still has his words in his head.

Both agreed to keep the incident a secret, not even coach Vicente del Bosque found out about it.

"My head told me that Xabi could not possibly have played," says the doctor 12 years later.

"I don't know if I did the right thing." The team drove to the stadium, where Alonso and Cota quietly separated from the group.

Cota enlisted the help of physiotherapist Miguel Gutierrez, together they numbed the star's leg and sewed up the horizontal wound above the knee.

"Cota was incredible," says Alonso today of his doctor.

“For me it is God.

To this day I don't know how I played in the semi-finals of a World Cup an hour and a half later.”

But the wound lasted, Alonso played one of the best games of his career and later won the title.