{"id":884584,"date":"2026-10-16T17:32:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T17:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/884584\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T17:32:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T17:32:08","slug":"thank-you-for-giving-me-the-chance-to-live-chelsea-legend-petr-cech-releases-emotional-statement-20-years-after-life-threatening-reading-head-injury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/884584\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Thank you for giving me the chance to live&#8217; &#8211; Chelsea legend Petr Cech releases emotional statement 20 years after life-threatening Reading head injury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Taking to social media to share his thoughts, the ex-Chelsea shot-stopper reflected on the enormity of the anniversary. &#8220;Yesterday it was 20 years since the &#8216;famous&#8217; Reading away game,&#8221; Cech wrote. &#8220;I kept this post for today as everyone seemed to be talking about it yesterday.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It is undeniably the day that greatly impacted the Premier League, football fans, my closest and of course myself. After 20 years there are many ways to look at it but let&#8217;s put the whole story into perspective.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The recovery was hard at the beginning and I had big doubts sometimes, I would return to playing, but I have learnt some valuable lessons along the journey.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Cech went on to explain how the near-fatal incident deepened his appreciation for football and highlighted the fragility of life, teaching him to live every day with purpose. The ordeal also prompted him to revolutionise his routine with cognitive brain training and breathing exercises, while motivating him to secure off-pitch educational qualifications to prepare for his eventual retirement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Taking to social media to share his thoughts, the ex-Chelsea shot-stopper reflected on the enormity of the anniversary.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":884585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[463,464,24507,371268,1084,8242,403,99],"class_list":["post-884584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-arsenal","tag-chelsea","tag-league-one","tag-p-cech","tag-premier-league","tag-reading","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=884584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/884584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/884585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=884584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=884584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=884584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}