When Alberth Elis woke up, nothing made sense.
He realised he was lying in bed, but he didn’t know where. All he could ascertain was that he was in hospital although he had no idea why.
Only one thing reassured him: the sight of his parents at his bedside. He asked them how he had ended up there.
“I didn’t know what had happened,” Elis says. “I didn’t know that something had happened to my head. And that’s when they told me.”
It was February 24 and Elis — a Honduras international striker with 64 caps and 13 goals for his country — was lining up for French club Bordeaux against Guingamp.
It was a mid-table game in Ligue 2, France’s second tier, but there was still a healthy crowd of more than 20,000 fans in attendance at Bordeaux’s Matmut Atlantique stadium to see if their team could start generating momentum for a promotion push.
Pre-match niceties completed, the game kicked off and within 40 seconds, Bordeaux launched an attack down the right side. A cross was curled into the penalty area but as Elis attempted to make contact on the edge of the six-yard box, his head slammed into defender Donatien Gomis.
Harrowing footage of the incident shows Elis — his body contorted by 90 degrees at his hips — fall head-first into the turf before rolling over twice, finishing just inches from the goal line. He doesn’t get up.
Elis was treated on the field by paramedics for eight minutes before being taken to the CHU Pellegrin hospital in Bordeaux where he was placed in an induced coma and underwent emergency surgery. He stayed unconscious for four days, with his parents Osman and Yohani Martinez never leaving his side.
Recognising his parents — and giving them a huge hug — was a positive sign when Elis finally awoke, but his ordeal was only just beginning. For the next 10 days, he could remember virtually nothing else about his life pre-accident.
“When I woke (from the coma) I didn’t remember that I was a footballer,” he tells The Athletic in Spanish, via a video call from Honduras. “I didn’t remember that I was in France, I didn’t remember that I was Honduran. The doctors thought it was going to be difficult for me to be well again.
“The first two weeks were difficult, because mentally I wasn’t 100 per cent, but day by day, I started to get better.”
Alberth Elis in action for Bordeaux in 2022 (Francois Lo Presti/AFP/Getty Images)
Details about his life began to emerge out of the fog in his mind — that he was Honduran, and a professional footballer, who played in France but also represented his country. He was, effectively, remembering what it was like to be Alberth Elis.
“Practically every day it was as if I was gaining a year and every day I was getting better and understood myself better,” he says. “Since I woke up, my parents told me that I was always happy. Happy because I was alive and grateful to God because he was giving me another chance at life.”
After a fortnight in hospital, Elis was transferred to a recovery clinic in Bordeaux where he was taught how to read and write again.
“I went to a teacher who helped me mentally — who taught me how to speak and how to write, because I lost that in large parts,” he says. “I couldn’t speak well, I couldn’t write many things well. I was in classes so that everything would come back a little bit at a time and that’s what I did all day.
“In the morning I went to school, in the afternoon I went to the gym, I went to other tests. And so every day was the same so that I could recover and come back.”
Elis spent a month in hospital, his parents remaining with him until he was discharged. It was simply good fortune that they had happened to travel over from Honduras to watch the Guingamp match.
“Thank God my mum and dad were there,” says Elis, who was otherwise living alone in France. “They were taking care of me all that time and to see them there when I woke up… the happiness I felt was very big.”
Alberth Elis leaving hospital with his parents, Osman and Yohani Martinez (Courtesy of Alberth Elis)
In an interview with Honduras’ El Heraldo newspaper, Elis’ father Osman said: “It seemed like every minute in that room was never ending. The tubes, the lights and the sounds of the machines… I looked at those lights and said: ‘What is going to happen?’. I held on to the faith that everything was going to be OK because we trust and believe that God can do everything and the miracle happened… (but) it was not easy.”
Elis’ best friend, Enrique Amador (pictured with him in hospital in the photo on the right at the top of this article), and his agent, Daniel Solis, also flew to France so they could be by his side, and he was later visited in hospital by his Bordeaux team-mates and coaches.
In their match after the Guingamp game, a 2-2 draw away to Rodez, Bordeaux’s players mimicked Elis’ trademark panther crawl celebration (his nickname is ‘La Panterita’, the little panther) when they scored and wore shirts with his name on the back. Elis says the gesture made him forever “grateful to the club and the city”.
Elis was also sent a heartfelt message from Gomis.
“He got in touch and told me that he was very sad about what had happened, but that he wished me well,” he recalls. “He gave me a lot of strength to get back on my feet and play football again.”
Elis was recovering slowly. He had visited Bordeaux’s training ground around a month after his accident, with a club video showing him embracing team-mates and coaching staff.
🚨 MARAVILLOSO: Alberth Elis visitó las instalaciones de Girondins Bordeaux donde se reencontró con sus compañeros y el personal del club.
🇭🇳🐾 pic.twitter.com/QYsuUDMKch
— De La Rocha 𝕏 (@AlvaroDLaRocha) March 29, 2024
But there was soon another painful twist in the story. In the summer, Bordeaux — who had been beset by financial problems for months — filed for bankruptcy and lost their professional status. Elis, still rehabilitating from his life-changing injuries, was left without a club.
“It was difficult because all the time I was thinking about going back to Bordeaux and recovering and playing for them again, especially as I had two more years on my contract,” he says. “That was my plan. But unfortunately the team went bankrupt. My idea was to go back to train in Bordeaux and then play there again. And when that happened, practically all the plans moved and today I am without a team.”
Since then, Elis has been busy plotting a route back into the game. He set up a third-division team in Honduras called Panteras FC, which he is training with, with a view to joining a more established club in due course.
He was also invited to train with the Honduran national team, as well as Club Deportivo Olimpia, one of the biggest teams in Honduras, and his first club. He says he’s had offers from clubs to join them but wants to take his time.
Many would find it surprising that he was willing to come back to the game at all given what happened to him. Is he concerned?
“I want to come back and show that I am 100 per cent,” he replies. “I would ideally return in January. I’ve already done tests with the doctor and they told me that I’m fine, that I can return to play and now I’m training. I have been training for five months and always train with a head guard that would help me if I suffered any blows.”
Players from Honduran clubs Olimpia and Lobos display a banner in support of Elis after his accident (Orlando SierraA/AFP/Getty Images)
Off the pitch, Elis — one of the country’s most recognised players after spells in Mexico, the United States and Portugal before he moved to France in 2021 — hopes his story can serve as an inspiration to others. He wants to help budding footballers in Honduras achieve their dreams, one of the big motivations for creating Panteras FC, as well as establishing the Alberth Elis Foundation.
“I want to help people in my country because I live in a country that is very hard and complicated,” Elis explains.
Pantheras FC are based in the tough city of San Pedro Sula, in the north west of Honduras, where he grew up. It was described by UK newspaper The Guardian in 2013 as the “most violent city in the world”.
“I want to support young people in my country so they, like me, can fulfil their dream of being footballers, of being professionals, to put them through studies and that they can come out of my foundation prepared,” he adds.
Elis, who says he was brought closer to God after his accident, is also giving sermons in churches across Honduras about his story, which he hopes to take to other parts of the world.
“This blow changed my life, it changed the way I see life and the way I follow God,” he says. “And, as a footballer, my dream is to play football again.”
Additional reporting: Tomas Hill Lopez-Menchero
(Top photos: Getty Images; courtesy of Alberth Elis)