Former Aston Villa starlet Brad Young opens up on 2020 stabbing that nearly took his life... and why he thinks it made him stronger as he seeks unlikely Champions League glory

Brad Young is running a few minutes late as he comes in from training to speak to Mail Sport.

Along with his TNS team-mates, the emphasis is all about looking forward to tonight's Champions League first round qualifying second leg in Montenegro against FK Decic, who they hold a 3-0 lead over.

But looking back is as important to Young as looking forward; a reminder that he is fortunate to even be playing football at all after being stabbed three times in the summer of 2020.

For years Young carried his story with him, reluctant to tell it to the world. Now, as the most prolific finisher in Welsh football, Young is eager to talk.

It was in May 2020 when Young was a scholar in Aston Villa's academy that, with Covid restrictions easing up, he decided to take advantage of some good weather to head to Elmdon Park near his Solihull home with three friends.

'We just played some football in the park,' he begins.

'I had a group of lads approach me and then tried to rob me. All I remember is one throwing a punch and then first instinct was to fight back and then I'm fighting with them.

'A lot of people came running over and I've got one guy in a headlock and I'm about to throw him to the floor so I can run off. As I've got him in a headlock I've just felt something weird from behind. I didn't know what it was but I just knew it was weird.

'I then looked down and just saw I was covered in blood everywhere.'

Panic set in for Young, then only 17. A frantic 999 call followed.

'Straight away I got on my phone and called an ambulance,' he said.

'As I'm speaking to the ambulance [staff] I was screaming and shouting that I'd been stabbed and my friend grabbed the phone off me before I collapsed.'

Unbeknownst to Young in that moment, calls were being made far and wide by his panicked friends.

His attackers - who had stabbed him three times from behind, one in the right hip area and two in his buttocks - had fled.

The wound paramedics discovered was 12 centimetres deep.

'I got rushed to hospital and I had to have three blood transfusions because I'd lost so much blood,' Young told Mail Sport.

'Then, I remember just lying there and waiting for the specialist to come in. I was lying there about seven hours and then they took me in for an operation.'

Young is measured and composed now when he reflects back to the most traumatic episode of his life.

He's a positive guy - 'I prefer to take positives than negatives from situations' - and firmly believes the trauma has made him stronger.

His positivity is perhaps why he humoured Mail Sport's slightly banal question of, did he feel it when he was stabbed amid the fight that had broken out?

'When I originally got stabbed it was like one of those little pins you use to put paper on the wall, you know?' Young said.

'It felt like one of them touching me. I didn't actually feel it and I didn't see the knife as I got stabbed from behind.

'I didn't see it or feel it, I just felt something weird, something strange. That's why I ran off then I looked down and realised.'

Young was a burgeoning star in Villa's academy and had big dreams of becoming a Premier League footballer in a matter of years.

And yet when he was lying in the park, his parents watching on after rushing to the scene, he was convinced he was going to die.

'I remember looking over to my mum and dad and saying, 'I love you',' he said.

'I remember thinking, hand on heart, that I was going to die.'

Young continued: 'I lost a lot of blood, I was sweating and I genuinely thought I was going to die.

'When I was in the hospital and before they did the first blood transfusion they finally let my mum in to come and see me - it was Covid time so you obviously couldn't go into the hospital to see people - and I was speaking to her normally while they were treating me and holding the artery where the blood was everywhere.

'Then I just went bright white all of a sudden and sweating like a shower was on me. That's when they rushed my mum out of the hospital and said, 'we don't know what is going to happen here'. That's when I got three bloody transfusions and that's what saved my life.'

It took months for Young's stab wound to close up. He thinks it was 16 weeks before he was able to train again.

'It was just open. Every day I had to get the stab wound packed in and the nurses had to come to my house every day to change it. It was just a nightmare.'

Miraculously, however, he was starting the opening game of the season for Villa's academy having worked tirelessly to not let the stabbing dictate his life.

While he would go on to win the FA Youth Cup at Villa, alongside rising stars like Louie Barry, Young departed for loans at Carlisle United and Ayr United before he took a chance and went to TNS in the Cymru Premier.

Now, after winning the Golden Boot and guiding them to a league title by a record-breaking 33 points, it's the Champions League he has his eyes fixed on.

His brace last week in the home leg has put them in a commanding position and while the atmosphere in Montenegro is expected to be febrile, few things faze the striker these days. After all, few thought he'd still be here.