Jamie Cassidy remembered the exact day he realized the life of a free person was about to end. It was October 17, 2020, the day Virgil Van Dijk encountered a horrific knee injury in the match against Everton, the same thing ended Cassidy's promising football career many decades earlier.
Cassidy, who won the FA Youth Cup with Liverpool in a squad with Jamie Carragher and Michael Owen, and used to practice with England at Euro 96, has long retired when he sat watching the Merseyside derby 5 years ago at his home in Knowsley, Liverpool suburbs.
Immediately after the match ended, he received a panic phone from his brother's daughter, Jonathan; She told him that Jonathan was arrested for drug trafficking at Manchester airport when he returned from Dubai, where he hid most of the summer.
Cassidy is sure that the game ended for both when a lawyer showed him a copy of the scene.
