It's been 17 months since Daniel Sturridge last took part in a competitive football match but there could be light at the end of the tunnel for the ex-Liverpool striker.
Sturridge has been offered a trial with LaLiga club Real Mallorca, 16 months after he was handed a four-month ban from all football related activities for breaching betting rules.
The 31-year-old was banned for six weeks in July 2019 for providing his family with inside betting information on his own transfer negotiations. But following a successful appeal by the FA, his ban was increased in March 2020.
Daniel Sturridge will trial with LaLiga club Real Mallorca after 17 months on the sidelines
He left Turkish club Trabzonspor following the verdict and has been without a club since, despite links with a move to David Beckham's MLS club Inter Miami last summer.
The ban was even more frustrating for Sturridge, given his career in Turkey had got off to a good start.
He scored seven goals in 11 games and also added four assists after joining them on a three-year contract in August 2019.
But it's clear Sturridge is more determined than ever to get back to the type of form that saw him named in the Premier League Team of the Season in 2013-2014.
The forward has spent the last year-and-a-half working on his fitness, in the gym and on the training pitch, at his home in Los Angeles.
His Instagram page is full of workout videos and training drills and in an interview with the High Performance Podcast, Sturridge insisted he is fitter than ever.
'Moving forward for me now I am driven. I know I have it. I know I am me. I am so confident. It is hard to explain it. I just feel it and people will see it,' he said.
'I am training so hard now my playing weight is back where it was eight years ago. I am obsessed by the fact that I know I want to be what I was before and better that. I will be better than that. I am wiser now. I am older now.
The striker has been working hard on the training pitch in order to get back to full fitness
Sturridge left Turkish club Trabzonspor in March 2020 after being given a four-month ban for breaching FA betting rules
'I didn't think I could get to that weight again. I didn't think it was possible. I am doing things I didn't think were possible.
'I'm proud of myself because I'm holding myself accountable, saying, you know what bro, you have got to go to bed now, or you have to do this, or you that's not for you, or don't do that, or I am going to link my friends, do I really need to link my friends if I have got to be up at eight tomorrow? No, I'm not going to link them.'
Sturridge's last competitive game on February 22, 2020, saw him play 55 minutes in a 2-2 draw with Besiktas.
Getting fit is one thing, but getting match fit will be a bigger hurdle. Only players who suffer serious injuries tend to spend as long out of the game as
