Jeppe Okkels details 'scary' Aberdeen injury that had new boy dialling 999
Aberdeen new boy Jeppe Okkels has revealed how a freak injury has seen his career go balls up.
The Dane previously played under Jimmy Thelin at Elfsborg and from there he won a big-money move to Utrecht but his time in the Netherlands was scuppered by a twisted testicle that required surgery and left him sidelined for two months. The winger was then sold on to Preston and before he signed they changed their manager and he ended up playing just 119 minutes in the Championship.
Thelin helped launch his career at Elfsborg and then came calling again to bring Okkels to Aberdeen this month, to get his former player back on track. Okkels said: “My injury when I moved to Holland was a really weird one - I twisted my testicle. It’s not something you usually hear footballers getting but I needed an operation. After that I had to lie down for some weeks and then build myself back up again because you’re not allowed to do any physical load bearing.
“It was really frustrating because it wasn’t anything I could have done something about, it just happens to men sometimes. I was on the bike and suddenly started to feel pain, I lifted up off the bike and it was still very painful.
“I had a look and it didn’t look like it should have! It was so painful I had to call the emergency number, went to hospital and had to have an operation. It was painful and scary at the time.”
The 25-year-old can joke about it now but back then it was no laughing matter and neither were the months after it! Okkels admitted: “Looking back I can talk about it and joke about it, but at the time it was really painful.
“I was out for about two months with it and wasn’t allowed to do anything at all for a part of that. I had only played a few games when it happened