“First the knife hit my shoulder,” he told BBC Sport.
I remember jumping over tables and chairs. I was running down the aisle and telling people, ‘There’s somebody with a knife; run. I’ve been stabbed; run, run, run.’
“At that moment, when I jumped over the table, he saved me. I was just thinking about running for my life, getting off that train. As soon as I got down from the first or second carriage, I set off the alarm, and I was completely covered in blood.”
“I was thinking that if I die, I won’t be able to meet my family again and that was the main worry for me,” he says. “Normally I would drive back to London. That was the first time I got on a train to go back. What are the chances of that happening? It’s crazy.”
The train made an emergency stop at Huntingdon, where armed police met it. After being given first aid by a fellow passenger, Gjoshe managed to get himself to the station car park, from where paramedics transported him to the hospital.
It was only after the surgery that he came to know that he had seven wounds on his bicep, shoulder and arm.
Doctors told him that the knife “had gone through my muscles” and had come close to hitting a nerve in his arm.
When asked if he feared his football career might be over, he said, “I was distressed. Just wondering, ‘What have I lost?’ I had no idea until I had the surgery. He said, ‘It is not a matter of much panic. You are very lucky.”
In the days that followed, Gjoshen recalls:
They moved me from one ward to another because the media were looking for me.”
After being released from hospital, Gjoshe endured several months of rehabilitation, only returning to full training in March, which he describes as “a huge relief.” I started getting movement of my hand; it was getting better day by day. It was a wonderful feeling.
Despite handling what he has endured with impressive indifference, Gojoshe has not sat on a train since the mass stabbing.
He says, “I wouldn’t want to do that anymore. You never know. It’s best to be safe. I can’t trust anything anymore.”
