Ajax’s Nouri wakes up from coma after three years

Tragic Ajax star Abdelhak ‘Appie’ Nouri has stunned doctors by miraculously waking up after spending two years and nine months in a coma.
The midfielder sadly suffered severe and permanent brain damage when he collapsed on the pitch during a cardiac arrhythmia attack in the summer of 2017.
But Dutch website AD say Nouri is now awake and that he “sleeps, eats, frowns and burps but is very dependent.”
“Good,” said his brother when asked about the Ajax ace’s condition. “He has not been home very long, we take care of him there now. I must say that since he is at home it is going much better than before in the hospital.
“He is aware of where he is, he is back in a familiar environment with his family. He’s no longer in a coma. He’s just awake. He sleeps, he sneezes, he eats, he burps, but it’s not like he gets out of bed.
“He’s very bedridden and still very dependent on us. On his good days there is a form of communication, for example, confirmation with his eyebrows or a smile. But you notice that he can’t last that very long.
“We talk to him like he’s not sick. We take him into our conversations and we watch football with him in the living room, for example. Then he watches. You notice that he likes that very much.
“He often shows emotions. Sometimes he is emotional, but often there is also a smile. That does us good. That makes you really appreciate a smile.”
Former Ajax teammate Frenkie De Jong recently revealed that Nouri helped him decide which club he should join on leaving the Amsterdam outfit.
The playmaker eventually made a £68 million move to La Liga champions Barcelona but not before he had received Nouri’s blessing on the transfer.
Then when De Jong was choosing between PSG and Barcelona in the summer, he visited Nouri at his home: “I started to have doubts. Then Appie’s mother came in and asked him: ‘Where should Frenkie go?’
“She named the clubs and said: ‘Should he go to Barcelona?’ Then Appie signalled with his eyebrows to agree. That was a very nice moment for me and the family.”