Tigres' Texan midfielder Jose Torres endured two and a half months in pain and was often confined to his bed.
The training field, teammates and the routine of being a professional footballer wasn't far away physically -- in the Nuevo Leon municipality of General Zuazua, where Tigres train -- but emotionally it might as well have been on a different planet.
Torres shed tears of sheer frustration at the slipped disc, the failed attempts to treat it without going under the knife and then the eventual surgery in Jan. 2015, which kept the 28-year-old out of action for six months.