India, April 9 -- "The wiser you get, the more mature you are, the more you understand how to deal with certain emotions at different times."

For someone who wore the Manchester United shirt for over a decade, Phil Jones never quite had the luxury of telling his story. Not the way he would've wanted to, anyway. Too often, the noise drowned him out; fitness updates, contract extensions, fitness updates again, the brutal social media ridicule, and the relentless focus on what he wasn't doing instead of what he'd endured.

But now, away from the spotlight and no longer bound to treatment rooms, Jones is beginning to find his voice. And people are listening.

At 32, the Englishman closed the book on a playing career that once promised greatn...