Bordeaux’s Honduran striker Alberth Elis, in recovery since coming out of the coma in which he was plunged after severe head trauma during a match at the end of February, is “doing much better”, his coach Albert said on Thursday. Will laugh.
“He’s starting to progress. He is good, he speaks, he understands everything but these are things you have to be careful about,” said the Spanish technician who visits him “every week”.
“Things like that (severe concussions) rarely happen, you don’t know how it’s going to happen. We listen to past stories like that of Rico, the goalkeeper of Paris SG (Sergio Rico, victim of a fall on horseback in Andalusia last summer, Editor’s note) with 25 days in a coma,” he recalled.
Elis, 28, suffered a major blow to the head against Guingamp on February 24. Evacuated on a stretcher, he was transported to the Pellegrin University Hospital in Bordeaux then operated on before being placed “in a protective artificial coma”, with “a vital and functional prognosis” then uncertain.
The Honduran striker (64 caps, 13 goals) came out of a coma four days later, his family then indicating that “Alberth is waking up and seems to be gradually recovering”. Since then, the player has left the university hospital for a private clinic in the Bordeaux region where he receives regular visits from the staff and his teammates.