Jonathan Gjoshe: Football player says he was stabbed seven times in the mass train attack

“I was stabbed in the shoulder first,” he told BBC Sport.

“I remember jumping on tables, jumping on chairs. I was just running down the hallway, telling people, ‘There’s a guy with a knife, run, I’ve been stabbed, run, run, run.’

“That split second, I jumped on the table and saved him. All I could think about was running for my life, then I got off the train. When I got down to the first or second carriage, I pulled the alarm and got drenched in blood.”

“I was thinking that if I died, I would never see my family again, and that was the main worry for me,” he says. “Normally I drive down to London. It’s the first time I’ve ever been 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 it was met by armed police. After being given first aid by a passenger, Gjoshe managed to get himself out of the station’s car park, where paramedics rushed him to hospital.

It was only after surgery that he found out he had seven wounds on his bike, shoulder and hand.

The knife, according to doctors, “went through my muscles” and came in part to hit a nerve in his arm.

Asked if he feared his football career might be over, he said: “I was really worried, just thinking, ‘What’s wrong with me?’ I had no idea until I had the surgery. They said, ‘It’s not much of a nerve. You’re so lucky.”

In the following days, Gjoshe recalls: “They had to move me from ward to ward because of the media that wanted me.

After being released from the hospital, Gjoshe faced several months of rehabilitation, he returned to full training in March, saying something like “It’s a big relief. I started to move my hand, it was improving day by day. It was an amazing feeling”.

Joshe has not been on a train since the mass shooting, though he has handled his experience with remarkable stoicism.

“I don’t want to now. You never know. It’s better to be safe. Now I can’t believe anything,” he said.