Feeling alone, in the dark and fearing for his life or his ability to walk again, Dani van den Heuvel crawled through the smoke, glass and mangled chassis of a car crash last summer. Six months later he would be keeping goal for Leeds United once more, released from the purgatory of a road which has asked far too much of a 19-year-old.
While he was away with the Netherlands under-19 squad in June, van den Heuvel, three team-mates and one member of staff were heading back to their hotel in a car. Travelling down a main road, van den Heuvel says another driver was pulling out from a side road.
The driver in the players’ car had two choices: collide with the passenger side of the other vehicle or veer off-road and into a traffic pole. He would take the latter route and leave their car crushed on the roadside.
