I don’t get to go to many games of our local 1st Division football team, Mainz05.

I should try harder.

Someone wrote a Letter to the Editor last week, echoing the following and finishing with the words “This is why I love Mainz”

Elkin Soto is a Colombian professional football/soccer player who’s been with the club for over a decade and planned to leave at the end of the season to return to Colombia with his family.

2 weeks ago, he suffered a horrendous injury – makes you shudder just to watch it – tearing all the ligaments in his knee, dislocating it  fully detaching the meniscus from the joint.

He’ll never play football professionally again and learning to walk’s  going to take forever.

Mainz05’s manager, Christian Heidel, immediately proposed extending his contract by a year.

Same money, nothing expected in return.

“We don’t leave our players in the lurch” was all he said.

Yesterday all the players ran onto the field for the warm-up wearing his #19 shirt.

Which was selling like hotcakes at the fan shop

In the 19th minute, the fan curve – never the quietest – started an “ELKIN SOTO” chant that you would have heard in the middle of town, 5km distant.

This is why I love Mainz.

18 May This entry was published on 18 May, 2015 at 08:00. It’s filed under Mainz, Mainz 05 and tagged Christian Heidel, Elkin Soto, Mainz05. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.