Jeff CarlisleOct 13, 2025, 01:35 PM ET
- Jeff Carlisle covers MLS and the U.S. national team for ESPN FC.
Nearly four years after being diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, Daouda Peeters is back on the pitch with the USL’s Las Vegas Lights. Las Vegas Lights
In the summer of 2021, Daouda Peeters felt like he was operating near the pinnacle of soccer.
A holding midfielder by trade, he was on the books of Italian powerhouse Juventus, and had previously trained alongside the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo. That season, his teammates included club legend Giorgio Chiellini, eventual FIFA World Cup winner Paulo Dybala and American newcomer Weston McKennie.
Four months later, Peeters was looking at the possible end of his career, paralyzed from the waist down due to a rare neurological condition called Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS). Peeters has since returned to the field, but the road back has been long and ongoing. He now plays in the USL Championship with the Las Vegas Lights, and he makes a point of letting his less experienced teammates know how fleeting a professional soccer career can be.
“The younger players, I say, ‘Boys, look: everything looks nice, but be really thankful and [enjoy] the maximum of your career because it can be finished like that,'” Peeters told ESPN.
His trouble began a few months into the 2021-22 season. In a bid for steady playing time, Peeters had been loaned to Belgian side Standard Liege. He was happy to be back in the country where he spent the bulk of his childhood. For the first two months of the season, all seemed well, but in late October, Peeters began feeling weakness in his legs. His stamina plummeted.
Peeters recalled running during practice and all of a sudden, he would fall down. The symptoms persisted when he was away from the field. He felt like there were electrical currents running through his legs.
“I wanted to go to the fridge to take something [out]. I fell down,” Peeters said. “So I knew there was something wrong. I was thinking at the beginning, ‘It’ll pass, there is nothing,’ but then on the pitch, it was getting always worse and worse and worse.”
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Standard’s chief medical officer, Dr. Bertrand Vanden Bulck, ordered tests, and the resulting diagnosis of GBS surprised him, with good reason. According to the Mayo Clinic, the incidence rate in the general population ranged between 0.4 and 3.25 cases per 100,000 people. Vanden Bulck said he had never seen a case of GBS before in 20 years working as a doctor in soccer.
“[GBS], it’s not the first disease we think of when the player complains about weakness in his leg,” said Vanden Bulck.
Dr. Michael Wilson, a neurologist and professor at UC-San Francisco, explained that Guillain-Barré is a disorder that attacks the covering around nerves, causing them to stop working properly.
“If you think about an electrical cord, and it has insulation around the wires,” said Wilson, “and so Guillain-Barré, there’s preferential attack on that insulation, but in most cases, the wires inside the insulation are intact.”
After the diagnosis, Peeters’ symptoms intensified. Within days of his last training session, he was in the hospital, paralyzed from the waist down and needing the use of a wheelchair.
“At the beginning, his family, the club, the trainer, everybody ask me, ‘Is it possible that Daouda will again play football?’ And nobody can answer this question,” Vanden Bulck said. “Guillain-Barré, it’s really difficult to make a good prognosis.”
Peeters said he was paralyzed for two months, his days filled with watching Netflix or reading books, but he could feel his body wasting away, his muscles atrophying.
Visa issues and an ankle injury have limited Daouda Peeters to eight appearances with Las Vegas in 2025. Las Vegas Lights
Rehab came in stages. There was electrical stimulation to get the nerves firing properly again as well as to activate his muscles. That was followed by plenty of core work to help stabilize his body, then coordination drills to help the muscles work together.
“In the beginning I had one part work and other part didn’t work, so I had to find the connection between all my muscles,” Peeters said.
The following winter, Peeters returned to Juventus to continue his rehabilitation, but there were still mountains to climb. It wasn’t enough that he was strong enough to play. Peeters needed to regain his soccer sense — the speed of the ball, where he needed to be on the field and when. There was stamina to build up again, too. When he first started playing practice games again at the end of the 2022-23 season, he found after playing for 60 minutes that he would lose sensation in his feet.
In a bid to regain his old level, Peeters was loaned to Sudtirol in Italy’s Serie B for the 2023-24 season. On Oct. 21, 2023 — nearly two years to the day that he was first sidelined — he suited up in his first official game against Cremonese, playing 78 minutes in a 1-0 win. He went on to make 19 league appearances.
“It was really special,” he recalled about that day. “I was like laughing, but really with relief. I was really happy to be back, a football player, to be an athlete, to be back with the team, to be back in the changing room, to be back on the pitch, and all this sensation, the adrenaline, it was something I missed a lot of times.”
But recovering the last 5% to 10% of his previous level proved to be the hardest. The start of the 2024-25 campaign saw him playing for Juventus NextGen, the club’s reserve side. Peeters felt stuck. By January 2025, he needed a change.
Las Vegas sporting director Gian Neglia first spotted Peeters during his stint as assistant sporting director at Venezia and when the player was with Sudtirol. When it came time to put together a list of possible targets for the Lights in 2025, Peeters’ name came up.
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“In Italy, [Peeters] was very much this guy that had ‘that disease,’ which is unfair, but sometimes that sticks,” said Neglia. “And so I think he was looking for that fresh start coming to America, and we were obviously very enthusiastic about getting him.”
Some European teams inquired about Peeters’ availability, but Juventus NextGen sporting director Claudio Chiellini encouraged him to look to the U.S. given the positive experience that his brother Giorgio had with LAFC. Peeters spoke with his family, as well as former teammate and current Las Vegas midfielder Younes Boudadi, who he knew from his younger days at Club Brugge’s academy.
“Boudadi said only positive words,” said Peeters. “So I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to take this step.'”
His campaign has been stop-start. Issues with his visa and a nagging ankle injury have limited him to eight league appearances, but Neglia has been impressed with what the 26-year-old has provided, especially his long-range passing and ability to work out of tight spaces. With the player under contract for next season, Neglia is eager to see what progress he can make.
The move to Vegas has provided Peeters with a different perspective on the game. And life. For so much of his young career, Peeters was on an upward trajectory that seemed never-ending, only to get sidetracked through no fault of his own.
He knows full well that his current port of call lacks the glamor attached to playing for a massive club like Juventus. He noted playing in the U.S. is “another mindset, another world,” but he’s still able to appreciate the successes, like recovering to the point that he’s playing professional soccer again. Not every victory has a fairytale-like quality to it. Some of the biggest ones — walking again, training again — happen away from the spotlight of adoring crowds and big matches. Some wins happen in solitary moments, along paths he didn’t expect.
“There are other opportunities,” he said. “I was already happy that I could walk again, that I could play football again. Even today, OK, maybe I’m far away from my family, but at the end it’s a great experience for me to be now in America. Also another country, another culture, and I’m feeling healthy also. So that’s really important.”
For Peeters, there are still goals to set and attain. He’ll get there going step by step.
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