EX-RANGERS star Nacho Novo revealed he suffered a stroke after surviving a near fatal heart attack.

The second major health scare left the footballer paralysed and unable to speak, and doctors believe it was triggered by the trauma he went through after undergoing heart surgery.

Novo's health battles began in January when he collapsed at a legends' tournament in Germany.

Glasgow Times:

The 39-year-old, who runs Rangers bar NN10 in the city's Kinning Park, told The Daily Record: “When I came back from Berlin to Glasgow, I was still on monitors all the time. I felt fine until one night, three or four weeks later, when I started to feel really strange. I couldn’t sleep.

“At about two in the morning I went to the kitchen to get a glass of water and took it back to bed. My girlfriend woke up and told me to turn the light off. But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t even speak or answer her back. I was slumped to one side, totally paralysed.

“I tried to get up but nothing happened. I tried to open my mouth. Nothing, my body was not working.”

Glasgow Times:

The Spaniard's partner Stephanie Harvey dialled 999 and the footballer was taken to Hairmyres Hospital in East Kilbride.

The ex-striker said: “She was absolutely panicking but she phoned the ambulance straight away and they rushed me to hospital. I don’t even like to think about what would have happened if she had not been there. The truth is, I was s***ing myself.

“I remember being in the back of the ambulance going to East Kilbride thinking, ‘Well Nacho, this must be it.’ I was so scared.

“But the doctors and nurses were brilliant. I will never be able to thank them enough.”

Glasgow Times:

Novo said he thought about his terminally ill former team mate Fernando Ricken, who has been fighting motor neurone disease for five years.

He added: "The strange thing is, after a stroke, your brain forgets how to do basic things. For the first few days, I couldn’t remember how to speak. Thankfully, gradually it all came back to me.

“Don’t get me wrong, even now sometimes my legs feel like jelly. I still forget things now and then.

“But that’s my life now. I need to get on with it. When it happened, the first person I thought about was Fernando. You know what I mean?

“He has gone through worse than me but he has never stopped fighting. Yes, it’s sad but the lesson is you have to keep fighting. Fernando and me are similar like that.”