For Manchester City fans, we doubt the name Sinan Bytyqi rings too many bells.
If you don’t remember, the now 23-year-old was one of the young up and coming attacking midfielders in the club’s youth set up, having arrived from AKA Admira in 2012.
Going through the club’s U18s, U21s and eventually U23s, the Kosovar footballer made 51 appearances for Manchester City’s reserves, scoring nine goals and picking up 12 assists.
Along the way, he also spent two loan spells in Holland with SV Cambuur and Go Ahead Eagles, featuring once on the first-team’s bench, in an EFL Cup game against Sheffield Wednesday.
Unfortunately for Bytyqi, all that came to an end in 2017 when he was diagnosed with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy and was told he had a 4% chance of dying suddenly if he continued to play football.
If he stopped, that would drop to 1%.
Marca caught up with him, a year after his decision to step away from the sport he loved to see what he was up to.
Discussing how the whole thing came about, Bytyqi wants everyone to know how supportive Manchester City were when the news broke.
He said: “The first to see me was Txiki (Begiristain). He told me they would help however they could”.
Then came Fergal Harkin, the man in charge of the Manchester City players on loan around the world, who came to him and told him he would take him under his wing at the club.
He continued: “Fergal is in charge of 35-40 loanees every season, but he told that he would build a team to work with him and these days we’re five to six people. We have two analysts, a physio, a doctor, as well as Joleon Lescott with tactical tasks, and me, the scout”.
Despite only getting a small amount of time to train under Pep Guardiola, Bytyqi explained he learnt more in that time than he did in all his career. For that, he’ll be always grateful.
That, and the fact that everything that’s happening with him now is down to football.
