James Maddison's Toughest Year: Overcoming Injury and Family Challenges
James Maddison laughs as he calls it “the trenches”. It hardly sounds like a joke.
Five children aged four and under. Two sets of twins. A serious knee injury. Almost an entire season wiped out.
For most of the 2025-26 campaign, the Tottenham midfielder was nowhere near a pitch, his year shattered by a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament suffered last August. As Spurs slid towards the relegation fight, Maddison was fighting his own battle at home.
“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 tells Kelly Somers in the first episode of the new series of The Football Interview, airing on BBC One at 12:45 every Saturday during the Premier League season and available on BBC iPlayer, BBC Football YouTube and the BBC Sport website and app.
It was anything but a gentle distraction.
“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.”
He calls it the toughest year of his life, and you believe him. While his team-mates were clinging to Premier League safety, he was trying to steady a house full of toddlers and newborns, all while wondering when – or how – his knee would let him be himself again.
A year away – and a son who thought Dad had left Spurs
The physical damage was obvious. The emotional sting arrived in a throwaway comment from his eldest son, Leo.
“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,” Maddison says. At some point in that gap, Leo simply assumed his dad no longer played for Tottenham.
“He couldn't even remember over a year ago when he was at all the games,” Maddison admits. The image of Maddison at home, machine strapped to his knee, watching Spurs on television while his son forgets the roar of the stadium, hits harder than any scan result.
“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.”
Watching Spurs suffer from the sofa
While Maddison was stuck on the sidelines, Spurs were stuck in reverse.
They survived only on the final day, finishing just two points above the relegation zone. The team lacked spark, invention, that pass between the lines he so often supplies. He could see it all, but only through a screen.
“We probably struggled a little bit for creativity and I'm watching the games thinking, 'what would I be doing there?',” he says. The question hung over every poor result, every laboured performance. For a player who thrives on influence, it cut deep.
De Zerbi’s reset: team meals, alcohol and simplicity
The mood around the club shifted when Roberto de Zerbi walked through the door in March. Spurs needed clarity, conviction and, frankly, a lift. The Italian brought all three.
"He's very clever. He's very tactical. He's obsessed with football, you can see that," Maddison says. But De Zerbi knew this wasn’t the moment to drown his players in detail.
“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.”
So he started somewhere unexpected: a team night out. No lectures. No video clips. Just a table, food, and the kind of rule you rarely hear from a head coach.
The 29-year-old recalls De Zerbi telling the squad: “We're all going to be drinking alcohol, we're all going to be having a good night.”
Maddison understood the point instantly.
“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.”
From there, the football began to loosen. The fear eased. The players, in Maddison’s words, started to fall back in love with the game.
On the bench in slippers
De Zerbi’s man-management stretched beyond the starting XI. It reached Maddison before he was even ready to kick a ball.
Another of the Italian’s early calls was to put his playmaker on the bench. Not fit. Not sharp. But present.
“I was almost like, 'I'm not ready to play yet, boss',” Maddison says. De Zerbi didn’t flinch.
He told him he could come on the bench “in my slippers” if he wanted. The message was simple: your presence matters. Your influence is bigger than your knee.
“He just wanted me around the group and 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.”
Spurs did just enough to “steer clear of the danger”, as Maddison puts it. He refuses to claim any credit, but his mere return to the matchday picture symbolised a club inching away from the brink.
Back on the pitch – and looking ahead
The real comeback arrived against Leeds on 11 May, when Maddison finally stepped back onto the pitch. It was a small cameo in calendar terms, but a huge one in his mind.
Pre-season, though, has been cautious. No risks taken. No shortcuts. After a year like his, nobody is gambling with his fitness.
"I'm working so hard to try and be fully fit and available for the majority of the season," he says. The ambition is clear and stripped of drama.
"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."
Tottenham have already seen what life looks like without him. The question now is what their season becomes if they finally get the version of James Maddison he’s been fighting so hard to be again.
