Even now, a mere ping on his phone is enough to fill Jermain Defoe with dread. 'If someone messages me saying, "Can you call me ASAP?", I panic and my heart drops,' the former England striker tells Mail Sport. 'Because I know what it feels like to have those messages and then you phone a family member and it is bad news.
'Hopefully one day it changes and I'll be less paranoid. But I panic about things because you want the people you love to be around forever. When you have lost people, you don't want to go through that again.