What Ryan Shawcross and Aaron Ramsey are up to now – 14 years after leg break
Ryan Shawcross and Aaron Ramsey will always be synonymous with one another due to one of the Premier League's most sickening moments in February 2010
Tackles are part and parcel of football - but Ryan Shawcross' on Aaron Ramsey will live long in the memory, especially for Arsenal fans.
Ramsey, then just 19 years old, broke his leg after a nasty collision with Stoke City centre-back Shawcross during their Premier League clash on February 27, 2010. It sparked fury within the Gunners camp and fanbase, with boss Arsene Wenger describing it as "horrendous".
Shawcross was forced to make a statement to insist there was no intent behind the ill-timed challenge, saying: "I would never, ever go out to hurt a fellow professional. I am deeply upset that Aaron has suffered such a bad injury and my thoughts are with him. I would like to send him my best wishes too for a speedy recovery."
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Ramsey did, thankfully, go on to fully recover and returned to action 10 months later. He would become a key player in his decade-plus spell at the Emirates, albeit with several spells on the sidelines through injury.
A shock 2019 transfer to Juventus, which saw him become the highest-earning British player ever on a weekly wage of £400,000, was a boost to his bank but not to his career.
Injuries followed him to Turin, and to Scotland where he spent the second half of the 2021/22 on loan at Rangers. After a year in France with Nice, Ramsey returned to his native Wales to sign a two-year deal with Cardiff City last summer - again struggling for fitness aged 33 with just eight Championship appearances to his name so far this season.
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As for Shawcross, who was relentlessly booed by Arsenal fans whenever they played Stoke, he too fell foul of issues with his legs in the latter years of his career.
They date back to a leg break of his own which he suffered in 2019 pre-season and initially kept him out for four months. His contract was cancelled by mutual consent in February 2021 as he neared a move to MLS side Inter Miami.
Another injury, this time to his back, cut his time in the States short, retiring in 2022 as a result. Last year he returned to Stoke to become their under-18s manager.
Speaking after hanging up his boots, Shawcross insisted the leg-break tackle didn't emotionally impact him. "It never affected me," he told the Daily Mail.
"Once I’d served my ban, it was over for me. It was one incident in a game in a long career with hundreds of incidents. Unfortunately a player got injured, that’s basically it."