James Maddison's Journey: From Injury to Family Life

The Football Interview returns to BBC One at 12:45 every Saturday during the Premier League season, also on BBC iPlayer, BBC Football’s YouTube channel and the BBC Sport website and app. The first episode of the new campaign, on Saturday, 22 August, drops in on a very different James Maddison.

Not the swaggering Tottenham playmaker threading passes under the lights. The 29-year-old who has spent almost a year with a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament, watching his team flirt with relegation and his own life turned upside down by a house full of small children.

Five of them. All aged four and under.

“We’ve been in the trenches,” Maddison tells Kelly Somers, half-laughing at the chaos, half-shaking his head at what the last 12 months have taken out of him.

A serious knee injury last August wiped out most of his 2025-26 season. While he fought through rehab, his partner gave birth to their second set of twins. The midfielder does not dress it up. It has been, in his words, “the toughest year of his life”.

What dragged him through was not football. It was family.

“I needed that positive distraction of my partner being pregnant and having to be there for her and forget about myself, even though I was going through a traumatic experience through my knee,” he says.

The reality at home, though, has been relentless.

“A lot of nappies flying about, a lot of accidents at home, but it’ll all be worth it,” he says. “We still love it. I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

The time away from the pitch has been so long that it has even confused his eldest son, Leo. For a child, a year is an age. For Maddison, the moment his boy thought he had left Spurs cut deep.

“I missed a year of football, and a year in a child’s life – from three and a half to four and a half – it’s obviously massive,” he says. “He couldn’t even remember over a year ago when he was at all the games.

“It would be nice for him to come to the games again and actually remember Dad playing instead of just Dad sat at home watching him with a machine on his knee.”

While Maddison worked in the gym and juggled night feeds, Tottenham lurched through a grim campaign. They only secured survival on the final day, finishing two points above the relegation zone. The playmaker could do nothing but watch.

“We probably struggled a little bit for creativity and I’m watching the games thinking, ‘what would I be doing there?’” he admits.

The frustration of not being able to help was obvious. Then, in March, came a jolt of energy from the touchline.

Roberto de Zerbi arrived and the mood at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium shifted.

“He’s very clever. He’s very tactical. He’s obsessed with football, you can see that,” Maddison says. Yet the Italian’s first move was not to overload a fragile squad with detail. It was to strip things back.

“When he first came in – in comparison to pre-season and what we’re training now – he didn’t want to make it too complicated. He just wanted us to get the love back for playing football.”

The pressure finally told in a different way: off the pitch. One of De Zerbi’s earliest calls was to order a team meal – with alcohol very much on the menu.

The 29-year-old recalls his manager’s message: “We’re all going to be drinking alcohol, we’re all going to be having a good night.”

Maddison understood exactly what he was doing.

“He wanted us to have a night where we all just relax. That feeling that we got made everyone feel more knitted together, straight away.”

Then came a more personal gesture. De Zerbi insisted Maddison return to the matchday squad long before he felt ready.

“I was almost like, ‘I’m not ready to play yet, boss’,” he says. The response was blunt. The Italian told him he could come on the bench “in my slippers” if he wanted.

He just wanted Maddison back around the group.

“He thought that would benefit the group. I took that as a massive compliment and just acted as if I was part of the bench, part of the team.

“I’m not saying that’s the reason why, but we managed to steer clear of the danger, which was a good feeling.”

Maddison finally stepped back onto the pitch against Leeds on 11 May. It was a small appearance with a big emotional weight. Since then, Spurs have refused to rush him. He has not been risked in pre-season, the club wary of undoing months of work.

The midfielder, though, sounds restless in the right way. The fear has gone. What remains is a clear target.

“I’m working so hard to try and be fully fit and available for the majority of the season,” he says. “I want just a fully fit, healthy season where I can just enjoy football.

“Because if I’m fully fit and I’m healthy, then I know what I’m capable of. And I know that I can affect games more than a lot of players in this league. So, let’s just hope for that.”

After a year of nappies, night shifts and lonely rehab, hope is one thing. A fully firing James Maddison in De Zerbi’s Tottenham midfield would be quite another.