‘Jellyfish stung me after Mick McCarthy got us in sea – whole squad pee’d on me’

Former Sunderland and Middlesbrough midfielder Julio Arca revealed the time he was hospitalised by a jellyfish sting after Mick McCarthy made his Black Cats squad get in the sea.

Argentina youth international Arca is a footballing hero throughout most of the North-East after playing for Sunderland and Middlesbrough in the Premier League and later finishing his career at South Shields, who he currently manages in the National League North.

Speaking on the Under The Cosh podcast, Arca revealed the time under McCarthy at Sunderland when he asked his team-mates to pee on him after a swim in the sea had gone terribly wrong for the midfielder.

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Arca said: “So we went on pre-season to America with Sunderland and at that time there was a lot going on with the ice bath, a lot of people were using ice baths for recovery. So after a couple of weeks we came back and in our training ground we didn’t have 10-15 ice baths like we had in America.

“So the manager decided to take everyone to the sea, obviously being in the sea is like having an ice bath, the water is pretty cold. So I was thinking ‘ok, we’re just going to go for a run, stretch, stuff like that,’ just for a change.

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“And Mick asked us ‘we’re just going to get in the water,’ so I was thinking ‘okay, cloudy, windy, cold.’ So we go in the water and I remember seeing Mick swimming around us like he was in the Caribbean.

“I saw him swimming and getting deeper, then he asked everyone to more or less get deeper and swim in the sea and I remember almost walking to where he was and I saw this black stuff in the water. I kind of put my arm in to see what it was and when I pulled my arm out, I had these legs all over me, my chest, my arm, part of my legs – obviously it was a massive jellyfish, it looked like an octopus to be honest.

“So I went from being cold to being really hot, my skin was burning, burning badly, so I didn’t want to come out of the water but I’d been told when that happens someone should pee on you basically. The first thing that crossed my mind I asked one of the lads to try was to do me (pee on him) there, outside.

“I remember coming out of the water, I was in pain, I wasn’t feeling well, and I asked probably two or three of the lads and they said ‘no, let’s just go back to the training ground.’ And I said ‘no, you need to do it now because the sooner you do it the better,’ and no one wanted to p*** on me.

“We ended up going back to the training ground, so I got there, put some ice on me, I tried to feel this heat on my skin a bit less and then I remember some of the lads p*** in a pot. And I went in the bath and they just dropped this pot of pee on me in the bath and honest the stings, I try to remember, it wasn’t pretty.”

Arca revealed that after he had been dosed in pee, he still didn’t feel better and an ambulance had to be called. He continued: “I went from being all funny and people laughing around and then I could not feel my legs and then my throat was more or less closing down, I couldn’t breathe properly.

“So that’s when everyone starting getting concerned and they got an ambulance and I spent one night in intensive care, (I was on) morphine and stuff like that.” Arca concluded: “It was funny for them (his team-mates) but not for me.”

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