Nobody wants to be lying on a football pitch wondering whether their face is still in one piece, but that is exactly the situation Djed Spence found himself in recently after suffering a broken jaw. Most people would be quietly shelving their summer plans. Spence, to his credit, is doing the opposite.
The England defender has been speaking about his hopes of contributing to Thomas Tuchel's World Cup effort, and he made a fairly decent joke about it too, pointing out that luckily he plays with his feet rather than his jaw. Which, honestly, is the right attitude. You have to laugh, don't you.
Spence is currently getting used to wearing a protective brace, which is obviously not ideal when you are trying to hold down a starting spot and catch the eye of an international manager. But the fact that he is focused on playing rather than feeling sorry for himself says something positive about where his head is at.
Now let's be fair here. Spence has had a career that has promised more than it has consistently delivered at the very top level. He was electric at Nottingham Forest, earned his England call-ups, and then found regular club football harder to come by than he would have liked. That is not a criticism, just an honest reading of how things have gone. Plenty of talented players find that the step up brings complications they did not expect.
But World Cups have a funny way of throwing up opportunities for players who are determined and fit and available. Tuchel will be building his squad over the coming months and he is going to want competition and depth at right back. Spence, if he recovers well and gets himself sharp, has every reason to believe he can be part of that conversation.
The jaw will heal. The ambition clearly has not taken any damage at all. Whether he makes the squad depends on a lot of things going right between now and the tournament, but you would rather have a player with that mindset in your setup than one who quietly accepts defeat when things go wrong.
Let me know your thoughts.