Insurance Times reports that "West Ham star Michail Antonio now pays £20,000 a year in insurance following a horror crash 13 months ago.
The Hammers striker piled his Lamborghini Huracan into a bin shed of a family home in Balham, south London while dressed as a snowman after losing control of his car.
Antonio, who earns £100,000 a week, is now driving a Mercedes-Benz G63 - but needed specialist insurance help to get the car insured.
‘I was struggling to get insurance this year,’ he told the On the July Podcast. ’No-one wanted to insure me!
’I had to go to a specialist insurance company, so my insurance this year is a madness! I’ve got a G63 now. They were offering me £10,000 for an [Audi] A3 to insure, or get a G63 and pay double the price but get to drive a G63 instead of an A3.
‘I’d rather pay £20,000 and drive a G63 rather than pay £10,000 and drive an A3.’
Crash horror details
Speaking about the crash for the first time, he revealed.
’It was Christmas Day. Still to this day it has hurt me. I miss that car. Basically, I was driving but it was a slippery road.
’In the car it corners nicely and holds the road, so I was going 30-35mph on a 30mph road. As it holds corners I think I don’t need to break, I’m just going to go round the corner like I do all the time.
’But as I go round the corner, it skids. So as it skids, I shit myself and I slam on the brakes - the worst thing you could do on ice as you just speed up when you’re meant to just go with it kind of thing.
’So I slam on the brakes, skid and go up on the curb - but I don’t really remember it, everything just happened so fast.
‘Then smoke comes out of the front of the car, and the engine is in the back so I’m thinking ’the car is gonna blow up!’, even though it’s just the airbags.
’So I’m having to jump out of the passenger side of the tiny car. It’s a madness.
‘And the thing is, I was in a snowman costume as well. I don’t get why I didn’t take it off in there, sort it out.’
Antonio tried to take people’s phones to stop them taking photographs and letting the story get out.
‘I was confiscating people’s phones saying ‘Give me your phone! Give me your phone!’ I was taking peoples’ phones!’ he continued.
’The only person’s phone that I didn’t take, was the owner of the house and she was the one that came out blogging. It wasn’t even her garden!
‘She lives around the corner, that was attached to the garden, but she sold the story saying ‘Lamborghini in my garden’, and then she sold the story again this year!’