Declan Rice Reveals Nerve Pain Battle During Arsenal Season
Declan Rice has revealed he has been quietly battling nerve pain in his hamstring since the festive period, playing through the problem during Arsenal’s gruelling season before being withdrawn as a precaution.
Speaking to ITV Sport, the midfielder lifted the lid on an issue that had been kept firmly in-house at club level.
"I was feeling a little bit of neural pain in my hamstring, which I was managing from after Christmas with Arsenal for a very long time," Rice said. "Obviously, not a lot of people would have known that, it was all behind-the-scenes stuff, but it was a smart decision."
The decision he referred to was his substitution, taken with the closing stages in mind. For a player who has carried an enormous workload, that final stretch of a match is where risk spikes.
"In the end, that last 20 minutes is probably where you pick up the most, and it’s where you play a 70‑minute match," he explained. "But that last 20 is where you really feel your body going for it, and I think it was a smart decision because the last few days I felt really, really good."
Rice’s admission underlines the physical toll of a campaign in which he shouldered responsibility at the heart of Arsenal’s midfield. He played 55 games for the club, driving them to a Premier League title and all the way to the Champions League final.
The medals and memories came at a cost. The schedule, he said, bordered on the absurd.
"It’s an obscene amount of games, the schedule was crazy, but what can we do about it? You can’t sit and complain," Rice said. "We have to just get on with it for the moments like I had winning that Premier League."
That is the trade-off at the top of the game: relentless fixtures in exchange for the chance to make history. Rice knows exactly where he stands on that bargain.
"You’d play as many games as possible to have that feeling again and knowing that there’s a World Cup at the end of it as well," he said. "You know, you’d put your body on the line to be always in to play, it’s a lot of games, but we’ll get our break at the end."
For now, the break can wait. Rice has made it clear he is prepared to keep pushing his body to the limit, as long as the prizes on offer match the pain he is willing to endure.
