With the fearsome pace that helped make his name, Jonathan Amon zipped by a defender, cut in off the left and unleashed a right-footed shot that he knew would make the net bulge the instant he hit it.
When you’re as ardent a devotee of positive thinking and resilience as he is, a believer in fate and God’s plan, it’s the sort of moment that completes the narrative arc: from darkness into the light.
After seven months out with a fractured kneecap, the young American sprung from the bench to score the only goal of the game on his return for Danish club Nordsjaelland in the autumn of 2020 — a cinematic reward for enduring all those hours of hard, lonely rehab and fear over his future in the game.
He was still on a high that October evening, buzzing as he called his family back home in South Carolina, and the adrenaline masked the throbbing pain in his knee. After all, this was his first competitive action in over half a year, there was always going to be some discomfort.
That pain, though, just got worse.
“I was on cloud nine because I was out so long,” Amon says. “When you start playing again, you have to build up playing time and rekindle relationships with people on the pitch. You’re thinking of getting more and more minutes. To make such a big impact in my first game back was everything I could want in that moment.
“But I could feel my knee wasn’t right, so a feeling started to creep in.”
An MRI scan two days later showed the same kneecap — the one he had worked so tirelessly to heal — had completely split during those 25 brief minutes back on the pitch.
“It was tough. Very tough, actually — kind of like a dagger,” says the 24-year-old winger. “When they told me, you kind of don’t believe it fully or you’re in a bit of denial like, ‘OK, that will only take maybe a couple of weeks or a month. It’s not that bad, you know’. Or you almost think he’s lying to you.
“It’s weird. You don’t know it’s going to be 14 months.”
Football can be a cruel game. Out for seven months, back playing for 25 minutes, out again for over a year.
During that second lay-off, the one-time USMNT starlet would be released by his club and worry that he may never play the game again.
But after making his latest successful comeback, Amon sat down to tell The Athletic why he believes more than ever that his future is bright.
“I have big dreams and aspirations,” he says. “I’ll do my best to reach those and I do believe it’s 100 per cent possible.”
It is late summer and Amon is completing his move to another Danish top-flight side, Lyngby, after months of trials and talks with other teams.
He has been back in Denmark, his second home, for a month after finishing his rehabilitation in South Carolina while spending time with friends and family.
As much as he enjoyed seeing them all, missing the U.S. is no longer the wrench it used to be. Amon first left home aged 15, after a Danish scout invited him to a camp in a Scandinavian country with which he admits he was not instantly familiar.
“I was like, ‘What is Denmark?’ — I’d never really heard of it,” he says. “I remember having a conversation with my dad. ‘Should we do it? Should we not?’. But I always wanted to be in Europe. You can get noticed there, and it was too good an opportunity.”
Football was in the family.
Amon’s Nigerian father Joseph introduced all his children to the game and, as the youngest of five siblings (among them three brothers who all played), it was a routine part of his childhood, with skills honed against bigger, uncompromising relatives on their local playing field. One of his brothers, Joseph Jnr, played in the 2011 Under-17 World Cup for the U.S. before being forced to retire young due to injuries.
So a chance to move to Europe and pursue a professional career had to be grasped.
While there, Amon, who had spent his early years at the U.S. Soccer Development Academy in the South Carolina city of Charleston, was offered a place at KIES, a Copenhagen boarding school renowned for its sporting programmes. Not long after, he was also invited to train with Nordsjaelland’s academy.
It seemed like the move of around 4,500 miles (over 7,000km) from home was already paying off, even if adapting to the bitter Danish winters was a challenge for a kid from a state with an average annual temperature of 62F (16.7C), and topping 90F (32C) in the summer months.
“It took some adjustment,” he recalls. “When I first came they said it was summer, but it felt like winter. Then when it was actually winter (typical January lows in capital Copenhagen are 34F/1C), I just had to survive it! In training after school, I was wearing gloves, three jackets, long pants, two pairs of socks…”
Amon lived with a host family, with whom he remains extremely close, effectively becoming their middle child. It helped him with another struggle: speaking Danish.
“I spent two hours a day, every day, learning the language,” he says. “It’s very difficult. Obviously in high school (in America) everyone has Spanish lessons or whatever, but maybe don’t take them too seriously. I just really wanted to learn it when I came to Denmark.”
That dedication was reflected on the pitch, where his pace and attacking verve quickly convinced coaches he could be fast-tracked into senior football.
In November 2017, aged 18, he made his first start for Nordsjaelland, scored, and did well enough that he was soon the subject of rave reviews.
“He is crazy-fast,” Kasper Hjulmand, Nordsjaelland’s manager at the time, told reporters after a 3-1 win over FC Copenhagen in 2017. “We are talking about extreme international speed — and then he can change direction. There are so few players that get me so excited, but he does.”
The following year, Amon was called into the U.S. youth set-up, and then Under-20s USMNT coach Tab Ramos was equally impressed. “We don’t have a lot of players like Jonathan in our system,” he told Goal. “His speed and his ability to take people on is special, and he’s still only 18, so we haven’t seen his best yet.”
In the 2018-19 season, Amon made 27 senior appearances for Nordsjaelland, scoring six goals and assisting another two.
His career should have taken off as quickly as he darts past defenders but, over the following three seasons, he managed just four first-team appearances as a succession of injuries hit.
Amon had been training oblivious to the fact one of his kneecaps was fractured. He wonders now if his problems stem from being a dynamic speed merchant playing on the artificial surfaces common in Danish football because of the weather in winter.
“For sure, that turf is not my friend,” he says. “Because when you have more speed or more power in the legs, you add more force to the ground. So, of course, it takes more toll on me — all the cuts, the turns, the changes of direction when I’m sprinting, rather than someone who plays midfield who is jogging at a slower pace the whole game.”
Those 14 months most recently spent on the sidelines were the hardest time of Amon’s career to date.
“In general, I’m a positive person and also have a lot of faith, so I try to kind of roll with the punches,” he says. “It’s not easy at all but what else am I gonna do?
“There are times you’re down. I’ve never thought about totally giving up because I always thought, ‘OK, I’m still really young so I just need to figure out my routine and my system on how not to get injured and how to stay healthy’. I can only try to get it better and learn from them.
“There are days when you’re more down than other days and you think a little more about if it’s going to work out. Is it just that your body is not meant for football?”
Rather than become isolated and homesick, he leaned more than before on the people he had befriended in Denmark.
“I knew the language, I had friends who I got a great connection with, so it kind of felt like a second home,” he says. “That definitely helped a lot, because if I didn’t know the language, if I haven’t been here that long, I could have definitely chosen to go back home or a different route.”
With the days built around toiling in the gym or physiotherapy sessions, Amon also read extensively in his downtime.
“It was a lot of motivational books, a lot of motivational audiobooks,” he says. “There’s one called Relentless: From Good To Great To Unstoppable (by Tim S Grover, a motivational speaker and tycoon who trained NBA basketball stars including Michael Jordan, the late Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade). Then there was (the international bestseller by Norman Vincent Peale) The Power Of Positive Thinking.
“I believe in God, too. I believe He’s brought me on this path for a reason and brought me to Denmark for a reason. My faith really helped while I was out. It was a lot of prayer — just praying about what I should do or what is the right way. What He had in store for me and asking Him all types of questions.”
Those prayers were answered this summer when, having been without a club since January, Lyngby offered him a trial and then a one-year contract. He has since made six appearances for the team based in Copenhagen’s northern suburbs as his fitness builds and insists that spending the first half of the year in the footballing wilderness did not make him consider trying to pursue his career back in the States.
“It wasn’t as stressful as it may sound, because I always knew there was going to be something,” Amon says. “There are so many teams in the world, so many teams out there.
“I felt like I’ve also established a little bit of a reputation in Denmark for them to know who I am. It was kind of just who would take the chance of my injuries, really, because I know the quality I have when I’m fit.
“I just needed one shot. It’s been very positive the last two months because I talked with the coach in the beginning and he wasn’t expecting much. He was expecting me to come back in my own time — to take it easy, to build myself in, and I was already ready. I played a couple of games in pre-season. That was very positive for me.
“The last two months have been just about developing and also getting my fitness and making sure everything’s good because, after being out for so long, there are always the little small injuries that can come back.”
Amon’s scintillating 2018-19 form led to senior caps in friendlies against Peru and Jamaica, and he has not given up on wearing the U.S. jersey in the future. “For sure, I will get there,” he says with calm self-belief. “I don’t doubt that at all. I’ll definitely get back and also get to the top.”
He thinks about the World Cup the States will co-host with Canada and Mexico in 2026 and is pleased by the game’s Lionel Messi-supercharged growth back home.
“When I first came, there were some (U.S. teenagers) in Europe, but not as many as now. Not even close. So, yeah, you can just see how MLS is growing and having Messi there will just bring more people, more fans, even more players,” he says. “The international team is just getting better and better. They will become a top national team soon.”
Amon’s focus now is catching up on lost time with Lyngby, who also signed former Everton and Iceland midfielder Gylfi Sigurdsson this summer. He can target the path taken by fellow forward Kamaldeen Sulemana, who went from Nordsjaelland to French club Rennes in 2021 before joining Southampton in this year’s winter transfer window amid interest from other Premier League clubs.
For now, though, Amon is glad to be playing again and, if gnawing doubt over his injuries resurfaces, praying about what comes next.
“I’m just asking Him to guide me, and I believe He has,” he says. “Now you could say I’m seeing the light.”
(Top photos: Getty Images)
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