After 1,113 days trapped in purgatory, Nnamdi Ofoborh could say he was a footballer again.
In the 81st minute of Swindon Town’s 2-1 victory over Notts County on March 29, the 24-year-old midfielder made his comeback to the whooping cheers of 22 family members and friends at the County Ground.
His previous appearance had come as a substitute for Wycombe Wanderers against Preston North End on March 13, 2021 — the week his life changed forever.
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Having signed a pre-contract agreement to join Steven Gerrard’s Rangers that summer, Ofoborh discovered he had swelling in his heart and had to cease playing immediately.
It took more than three years to return to where he is now, a period that included a career-changing move being derailed, isolation taking a mental toll during lockdown, two heart operations, a battle to play again and six months of rebuilding his body alone while he waited on a club to give him another chance.
“These past three weeks have been surreal,” Ofoborh, opening up about his experience for the first time, tells The Athletic.
“When I was out warming up, I couldn’t believe I was actually back. The ball was taking forever to go out and I was looking at the clock saying, ‘I need as many minutes as possible here as I’ve got 22 people, so I need to have a shot at goal!’.
“I had a feeling I was going to play but I didn’t tell anyone, even though they were all there. They should have given me my own stand! I could hear them cheering, so it was a special moment.”
He is one of few professional players competing with a defibrillator in their chest, a list that includes Manchester United’s Christian Eriksen, Girona’s Daley Blind and Luton Town captain Tom Lockyer, who collapsed twice on the pitch last year.
It is designed to act as a fail-safe if his heart starts failing to pump blood by outpacing his heart rate and then gradually lowering it to a safe level.
“If it can’t do it then it shocks you and, by God’s grace, it will go back to normal. I’ve had no problems so far,” says Ofoborh.
“If you run to catch the train you wouldn’t think to hear how your heart was beating, but any moment I feel out of breath I just listen to it beat. It’s a lot louder than it would be for you. I feel like it’s literally in my head.
“After a while, it just became kind of normal. I feel like Iron Man now, so I tell my friends I’m Tony Stark.”
After signing a deal until the end of the season last month, Ofoborh has now started the past four games and was named man of the match against Sutton United in just his second start. Swindon’s retained list was announced yesterday and Ofoborh has been offered a new contract to stay at the club.
“When I play on Saturday I don’t think, ‘If I’m not careful I could die’,” he says.
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“I don’t believe God brings you to a tough time and leaves you there. I believe he always had my best interests at heart and, if worst-case scenario something does go wrong and I don’t play again, then that is the plan he has for me and there must be something better than what I’m trying to do right now.
“I think I’ve got past the toughest part, now it’s just about enjoying the fruits of my labour. It’s been a crazy journey, but I feel lighter now.
“To close that chapter and open a new one has been a real blessing.”
It all started in the final days of 2020. Ofoborh was training normally with Bournemouth’s first team when a sudden, unfamiliar breeze swept through him.
“I couldn’t hear much, apart from my heart racing: boom, boom, boom,” Ofoborh tells The Athletic, beating his fist against his chest.
“I felt like I was going to faint. I crouched over and after about 30 seconds it went away. I was like, ‘What was that?’, but then started training like nothing happened.
“I told the physio and the doctor but neither of us knew what it was, so they never really took it seriously.”
On January 2, 2021, Ofoborh was an unused substitute away to Stoke going through the post-match running formalities when that same feeling descended.
“It was like I heard a bang and then everything started to happen,” he says.
“I said, ‘Not again’, but my team-mate Jordan Zemura heard me. While everyone else lined up to run again, I crouched over. Jordan shouted ‘Nnamdi, Nnamdi, Nnamdi!’ to the physio.
“I felt like I could faint, I could just drop right there. It is a crazy thought process when you consider how important your health is, but I was thinking, ‘If I drop everyone is going to make such a scene out of this with the media and doctors, so just don’t drop’.
“They told me to go inside but no one brought it up again or checked it. If no one tells me something is wrong, nothing is wrong. I’m not going to keep going back to you. They initially said I was probably just stressed about the contract situation.”
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He had decided it was time to move on when his contract expired in the summer, having made only five senior appearances for Bournemouth since joining in 2017, aged 17.
It was later that month that a pre-contract agreement was agreed with Rangers, where his childhood idol Gerrard was manager.
Ofoborh spent the last six months of his Bournemouth contract at Wycombe Wanderers, the club he had helped gain promotion from League One the previous year. Two months passed without any further incidents.
Then it happened twice within the space of a week in March — this time on the pitch, in the final minutes against Queens Park Rangers and Preston.
“I didn’t have time to crouch, so I just soldiered through it. It was like I was moving in slow motion and everyone was moving super fast,” he says.
“My coaches were shouting at me thinking I wasn’t tracking my runner, but in my head, I was thinking, ‘I could die right now’.”
The Wycombe medical team acknowledged that these episodes could not be ignored and he was sent to see a specialist on the morning of an evening kick-off against Barnsley.
His chest was hooked up to a treadmill as he was pushed to his running limits for 25 minutes in what is known as an exercise stress test, or an electrocardiogram (ECG), which assesses how the heart is operating.
“He asked how I felt, but I felt no symptoms so I asked if I could go because I was rushing for the game,” Ofoborh says.
“The doctor just looked at me silently. He said, ‘You can’t play, Nnamdi’, and turned his screen around.
“It showed my heart beating and he told me my heart rate gets to a point when something is happening that is stopping my heart pumping any blood — and that it had happened right there on that bike for about 30 to 40 beats.”
Ofoborh’s heart had started working again but theoretically, the doctor explained, he should have gone into cardiac arrest.
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“I didn’t really say much. I just went back to my car and cried. That’s when I realised s*** was about to change.”
The next day, Ofoborh had an MRI scan but chose not to tell anyone, including his parents and girlfriend at the time.
Twenty minutes after he got home, he was called onto a Zoom meeting with the specialists and club medic and was informed there was swelling on his heart and the inflammation was causing periods of irregular heartbeats.
He was told that with the right medication and rest, the condition, myocarditis — Bayern Munich full-back Alphonso Davies received the same diagnosis after having Covid-19 in July 2022 — could heal within three to six months.
“In my head, I knew three months took me to June,” says Ofoborh. “I am meant to be hitting the ground running when I go up to Rangers, so this is going to mess everything up.
‘To be fair to Rangers, they messaged me and Gerrard spoke to me. They said they still believed in me as a player so they’re not going to go anywhere.”
Ofoborh went downstairs, closed the laptop his family had been watching and broke the news to them. He gathered all his friends on a video call to inform them and then went to his room.
It was the day after then Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the population should cease all non-essential contact as the pandemic took hold.
“My mum has a saying from when my dad was ill when I was younger: ‘If not you Nnamdi, who would you wish it upon?’.
“I would rather it was me than any of my family or friends, so I stuck with that. That probably got me through it.”
Ofoborh had two sets of tablets to take each day: one set to lower his heart rate and another to take away the inflammation, but he was reduced to life as a hermit.
“I was basically bedridden,” he says.
“I was allowed to go out on walks, but my heart rate wasn’t allowed to go above around 100 beats per minute, so I only went out a couple of times.
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“The medication made me tired and drowsy. I would wake up, eat, take the medication, sleep through the day, eat, take the medication, sleep.
“Other than going to the toilet and getting water, I spent days and days in bed just counting down the days. As a person I changed.
“Even today, I have no problem staying 24 hours in my room. There could be a thousand people in the house and no daylight, but I have no problem staying there.”
Ofoborh had contracted Covid-19, but the doctors were unable to determine the cause of the inflammation.
But just before he emerged from those three dark months, Ofoborh saw Eriksen collapse on the pitch for Denmark in June 2021.
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“As soon as he went over, I stood up straight away. I just knew it was his heart. I felt like I was the only one who realised it.” he says.
“It was a ‘wow’ moment. It was a shock happening to me but an even bigger one happening to him. Andy Scoulding (then Rangers chief scout) messaged me straight away to ask if I was OK.”
Ofoborh soon moved to Glasgow to begin life at Rangers, but the next MRI scan showed that, while the period of rest had allowed the swelling to heal, it had left extensive scarring on his heart.
Over the next weeks, he repeated the same exercise stress tests and the number of irregular heartbeats gradually dropped to as low as two missed beats, which is essentially the heart skipping a beat.
It was not enough to be declared fit to return, but the doctors had said at the start that, if three months was not enough time to heal, the earliest possible return would likely be 12 months. It deemed Ofoborh’s first season at Ibrox a write-off.
In November 2021, having recently recorded a clear ECG test, he was taken through the severity of the situation during one of his six-weekly visits to the London specialist.
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“He had spoken to 30 doctors. Fifteen said I could play and 15 said I couldn’t,” recalls Ofoborh.
“I said, ‘I don’t want to know about any of your other doctors, you are the top guy, so give me a number out of 100 on what the odds are of me playing football again’.
“He said 35 to 40 per cent. I started laughing and he looked at me funny, obviously thinking those aren’t good odds.
“I’m a big believer in Jesus Christ, so it was a great number to me. That’s 40 times more than Jesus. He didn’t even need one.
“I thought, ‘You’ve put that out there in the world, so now God is going to handle that’.”
Ofoborh’s faith helped him, but his belief was tested in March 2022, the first anniversary of his condition being detected.
He travelled to the hospital hopeful this was the day he would pass the test and be given permission to return to action.
He took his parents along for the first time, having previously attended every meeting and test alone to protect his family from the morbidity of the situation.
“That was probably the first time I showed any emotional reaction,” he says.
“The machine started slowing down. My parents didn’t know why the test was stopping, but I did. As soon as your heart stops pumping, they slow it down but keep the wires on you so they can see how the heart reacts.
“I had enough, so started pulling the wires off. I told my mum and dad, ‘Get ready, we’re leaving’.
“I had told myself three months and it wasn’t. I had been told 12 months and it wasn’t, so that probably means my career is over.
“I was angry because Eriksen had fallen three months after I first said there was a problem, done his rehab and was back playing for Brentford.
“I was just angry at the world. Why isn’t the doctor finding what he needs to find, why is my body letting me down?
“Why didn’t Bournemouth take me seriously the first time I told them or help me after the second time? My life would be completely different if they had just listened.” The Athletic contacted Bournemouth for comment, who said that their medical staff conduct regular cardiac screenings and treat these issues with the utmost importance.
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Ofoborh lived alone while Glasgow moved up and down lockdown tiers.
He was attending training every day but was on the outside looking in as Rangers beat Borussia Dortmund and RB Leipzig on the way to the Europa League final and the Scottish Cup in his first season.
“It was bittersweet,” he says. “I was happy for the boys as this is what you pray about, but every once in a while it would set in that I couldn’t be part of it.
“Some days I just wouldn’t go into training because I couldn’t take it. Just sitting around while everyone else is preparing for Celtic and these top European teams.
“There were times I wouldn’t go in for three days. That meant I wouldn’t speak to anyone for three days apart from the person delivering my food. I wouldn’t even go into the living room. I got so used to being alone and not speaking.
“Something would come over me that I still wasn’t part of this team and then I’d go home and be upset. A new day would start and I’d feel the same as I did yesterday. Some days I would say to Glen (Kamara), ‘Just go without me.’
“I wouldn’t say I was depressed, but there were probably signs that align with it.”
Eventually, an operation was set for June 2022.
“The same operation had been mentioned to me in August 2021 (four and a half months after diagnosis), which would have me back in weeks, but they wanted it to heal naturally,” he says.
“Yet here we were almost a year later, with the same operation.”
Ofoborh entered a theatre that resembled something from the movies, with a vast white room containing only an operating table, a blinding light beaming down and 20 surgeons in scrubs surrounding it.
“I wasn’t nervous at all,” he remembers. “I find that hilarious now. Maybe that is how I was dealing with the nerves, but I was smiling the whole time.
“It took nine hours. They went in through here (the middle of his chest) and put a hook in, froze it and cut the scarring off.
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“They said the scarring wasn’t as big as they thought when they went in, so I spent about four or five days in hospital.”
After six weeks of recovering from major surgery, Ofoborh did another ECG test. It passed without any irregularities.
There remained some question marks as the recent trauma of Eriksen had heightened the caution even more than usual.
Ofoborh’s surgeon suggested he have a defibrillator for the sake of his everyday life, as much as his football career.
“I said, ‘Let’s do it’, but I also said I’m not getting this op for no reason. If you lot won’t let me play and I have to retire, then I’m not getting it.
“The doctor said if I got it and my heart tests were the same, it would reassure him and it would reassure the club about how they can protect themselves.”
Ofoborh went under the knife again in September and had his defibrillator placed under his left chest muscle.
He did another ECG test in November, which again recorded no abnormalities. It had now been 18 months since he had last experienced the racing heart sensation and it had been close to a year since any irregular heartbeats had been recorded.
“The doctor told me I could start rehab because he had a level of confidence he didn’t have before because the tests were better, the MRI was clear, the exercise test was clear and we had another layer of security now with the defib,” he says.
“It reached March 13 again, two years out now. That was the day I lost it in terms of keeping everything bottled in. The day before I had snuck home upset, but this day all the boys saw it. Mick (Beale, the Rangers manager at the time) calmed me down and told me to go home and see my family.”
Not playing and conscious of his contractual situation with Rangers, Ofoborh sought guidance from the English Professional Footballers’ Association (PFA), who had several calls with him offering advice and support but advised him that as he was playing in Scotland, it was outside of their jurisdiction.
Ofoborh claims he did not receive support from the Scottish PFA, which says he was not a member and so was ineligible for help in returning to play.
A Dutch expert Ofoborh met before the second operation — who had worked with Blind after he collapsed twice on the pitch in 2020 — had suggested it was a different thing that had caused the initial problem than his own doctor had diagnosed.
Seeking consensus of opinion to strengthen his case for returning to play, Ofoborh took matters into his own hands and covered the costs of travel to the United States in April 2023 to meet two leading experts: the head of cardiology at the NFL and a woman who was said to be the best in the country.
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Both experts agreed with the first specialist that he was clear to play, but he decided he was going to test his heart himself.
“I went out running myself way before Rangers knew that’s what I was doing. I had a meeting with Mick in December 2022. He said, ‘Tell me the truth, what have you been doing?’
“I told him I’d been on a couple of runs. I did a 5km on my 23rd birthday. My uncle had cancer, so I did a run to the hospital.”
Rangers and Ofoborh agreed a mutual termination of his contract in September 2023.
Ofoborh returned to Lewisham as a free agent, where he did his own rehab. He trained Monday to Friday doing one football session, one gym session and one running session every day.
He could not run 10 minutes continuously following such a long period of inactivity, but then he got his first taste of organised football from an unexpected source.
“I went to Goals (a company that runs five-a-side pitches) every day training and one day some random guys needed an extra player. I was about to go home but I said, ‘Cool, if you really want me to.’ I was thinking, ‘You guys don’t know but you just hit the jackpot’.
“The ref had seen me training before, so I bet him I’d score 10 goals in the next 10 minutes. I won the bet.
“After a while, they were like, ‘Bro, do you play?’. I just said ‘I used to’, but then they wanted me to play every week. I did it for a couple of weeks and then I told them I had been ill.”
Ofoborh spent two weeks training at National League club Bromley, but other interested teams wanted him available to start sooner than he or his agent could promise.
Then, one afternoon as he spoke to his uncle Andrew by his graveside, he received the phone call to tell him Swindon were inviting him in to train.
“When I walked into the building I said, ‘This is it, I’m getting signed’. Once they see me out there it’s over, I just needed someone to give me the chance.
“My uncle is the reason I chose the number 59, as that’s the age he died. It was heartbreaking to see him as he was such an important person in my life.
“I promised him one time in hospital that I would be back one day. I was hoping he would be there when that day came, but his memory will never leave me, so I thought it (the number) would be a nice way to say thank you to him.”
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The former Nigeria Under-20 international is now learning to dream again.
“If I could pick a couple of goals, the first would be to play for Nigeria. The other would be for Manchester United to drop into my DMs,” he laughs.
“If they ever need me to partner up with Eriksen, it would be like Iron Man and War Machine.”
(Top photo: Jordan Campbell)
