The painful slow death of a playing career after World Cup highs

As so often can be the case in football, it's the hope that hurts you.

Joe Morrell still had hope. He still had aims of returning to play alongside Wales team-mates he had shared dressing rooms with from youth level all the way to two major finals.

Even relatively recently, the 28-year-old still had hope of being part of Craig Bellamy's side that carry the ambition of returning to the World Cup stage Morrell enjoyed just three years ago.

And then it was all taken away. Not suddenly, not immediately. Not even remotely obvious when a nothing twist of the knee ultimately turned everything on its head.

But slowly and, ultimately, painfully.

So much so that, after 21 long months of clinging to hope, last month's decision to retire brought more relief than resentment.

"People have come up to me, asking how I'm doing, as if they expect me to be absolutely devastated," the now former Wales and Portsmouth midfielder says.

"I can imagine if you'd been sat in a surgeon's office after a bad injury and they tell you that's it, you can't play again, that would be tough.

"But I think I might have preferred it."

Instead, Morrell went through almost two years of what he called the "snakes and ladders" of trying to get back on the pitch, trying not to take home the setbacks to protect his family from the frustration and nagging doubts over his future that increasingly crept in.

Enough to take a toll on most - and especially for someone who had scrapped so long in his career, surprising people along the way.

There was a point as a teenage midfielder he was staring at release from Bristol City and not even Margate at the bottom of the National League South were interested.

Promotions, 170 league appearances and 37 international caps - including five at Euro 2020 and the 2022 World Cup - are a testament to his determination.

But the acceptance came when, after three trials at League One clubs with failed medicals at all three, he realised he could not keep putting himself and loved ones through it.

"I can remember getting the results of the scan back," says Morrell after the wheels of his retirement were set in motion.

He recalls feeling a "weird" click in his knee in a game for Portsmouth against Oxford in January 2024, less than two months before the Wales squad he was very much a part of faced play-offs for Euro 2024.

"As an athlete you're almost pre-conditioned that an ACL (anterior cruciate ligament) injury is the worst of the worst, and [there was] the sense of relief when it wasn't that. Looking back, I would have snapped your hand off."

The injury was actually a chrondal defect, a knee cartilage injury, which required surgery and around five months out.

But then a slip off a box doing plyometrics as he entered the final stages of rehab saw the screws from the operation come out of place and become stuck behind the knee. Excruciating pain and a further four months out.

"It was still all very laid back, and you trust people to do their jobs, but there was complication after complication," he says of the lead-up to a call that in the end felt very straightforward.

"In truth, I haven't felt like a footballer for a long time now."

But neither is he a bitter ex-pro.

He says the difficult, drawn-out process of facing up to being a former footballer has been a brutal reminder that it was never his identity ahead of being a husband and friend first.

And instead of the 'what ifs' - though there is some wondering about different decisions over the past 21 months - Morrell's mindset has been more firmly fixed on the 'what next' for a while.

"I've always been passionate about coaching, always knew that I was going to go into it - it's just I expected it to be at 34," says Morrell, who has already completed his A-licence with the Football Association of Wales (FAW) alongside the likes of Xherdan Shaqiri and Pepe Reina.

"Perhaps others would have gone for another rehab and tried to squeeze another year out of playing - but I've maximised everything out of my career.

"I was never going to be a Premier League player. I can guarantee no Wales fans came to a game and thought 'Joe Morrell's in the team, happy days'.

"I'm 5ft 7in, I was slow, weak, there was a limit where I could get in terms of God-given talent."

But, he points out, with coaching there is none of that.

"It's about what your ideas are, how you motivate. That excites me," he adds.

"And in a way I'm lucky to have gone through this because I think empathy could be one of my strongest traits as a coach.

"I've experienced pretty much everything you can - I've played at an elite level, a really bad level, released, promoted, captain, dropped, and now retired through injury."

Morrell says the relief of retirement has even inched into enjoyable - not because he plans on sitting around, but because he can be proactive.

No more hanging on calls from an agent trying to find a club, or waits to see how his knee has coped after the last session.

Conversations have already been had about the future.

After the slow death of a playing career, there is an eagerness for the new life as a manager to begin.

"Two years ago, I was playing every game, playing for Wales, played at the World Cup the year before, and then, bang, that's gone," he says.

"The tap's turned off in terms of that pressure, that purpose that football gives you. And that's what I've missed.

"I've bumped into people who've said make the most of retirement - but I've sat around for too long."

He will, though, sit down and take in Wales in World Cup qualifying this week having shared a dressing room with the vast majority of the squad that will face Liechtenstein and North Macedonia.

"It has been tough watching a little bit because, since this manager has taken over, I think it would have suited me as a player," says Morrell, who was eligible through his Merthyr-born mother Sian and won age-grade caps from under-17 up.

"But it's not as if I got injured two weeks ago. I love watching them. I grew up dreaming of playing for Wales and never thought it was possible to play in a World Cup."

He will settle for watching this time around, but is allowing himself a new dream of being back involved as a coach of the future.

And given how he handled the challenges of his playing career and the way it has ended, it appears to be an ambition based on more than just hope.

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