The Great Soccer Forum Write Off (Group 1)

Dub13

The Great Soccer Forum Write Off (Group 1)




The top two go into the final.

Please use This Thread to discuss the article's.




Article 1

Got Steel?

Stuart Pearce, Bryan Robson, Mark Hughes, Terry Butcher, Tony Adams, Greame Souness all players I looked up to in my formative years, and all had a couple of things in common an amazing passion for the game; and a finely tempered steel running through their bodies.

In recent years and with the influx of some incredibly talented footballers to the game the focus and importance of someone who has that steel and is truly passionate about their team and the game has been disproportionately marginalised. For all the Ronaldos and Messis of the world, the great teams wouldn't have won anything without the Gary Nevilles and Carlos Puyols. There are players who play the game not because they are being paid extortionate amounts of money, but because they love being out there. Players that if they didn't have the ability to play professional football, would still be turning up for their local pub teams on a Sunday morning, players who take hits and just keep on coming regardless.

Passion for the game is vital in any team that has a pretence of being successful, whether you're playing in the Premier League in England or Division 3B of the United Churches League it doesn't make a blind bit of difference. You will always have one or two players who are a bit special, but they don't win you the game. They'll put you ahead sure, but if you haven't got players who are willing to run through a wall for you then you'll lose far more games than you'll win. Football is a really simple game, and persperation is 90% of the battle. Give me 11 journeymen footballers who have a real desire to play the game, are willing to battle for each other and do all the hard work required and I'll be happily supporting them week in and week out.

When we look at the some of the biggest influences in the top teams around the world historcially you would point to Makelele at Madrid, Keane at United, Viera at Arsenal, Maldini at Milan, Souness at Liverpool, Reid at Everton and so on and so forth. In the modern game, that trend has continued with Puyol at Barcelona, Gerrard & Carragher at Liverpool, Terry & Lampard at Chelsea, Rooney & Neville at United... nobody at Arsenal.

Expanding on the Arsenal point for second, there's no doubting that Arsene Wenger has built not just a squad but a whole club of players that play some astonishing, incredible and exhilirating football. He's done that for the last 12 years and has had a siginificant amount of success. However all that success came when he had players like Tony Adams, Martin Keown & Lee Dixon in the early years, not to mention Nigel Winterburn who is literally playing for his local pub team the moment! In his later successes he had Manu Petit in the centre of his midfield and Patrick Viera who has a huge passion for the game. Now he has a team of technical superstars, but nobody able to do a job of dragging the team up physically when they are being out-battled. Arsenal are the perfect example for my point, a team of players who are technically incredible, but who will struggle to ever win anything without bringing in a couple of players who have a passion for the game that would see them play through injuries, poor weather, taking a bit of a kicking etc and come out stronger for it. In short they're soft all the way through the team, they don't have the steel required to bring them to a title shot. I love watching Arsenal play but it must be incredibly frustrating to be a supporter when they have that much ability but no end product. If Arsenal had a Tony Adams and Patrick Viera with the current squad, they would be incredibly difficult to beat.


Of course Arsenal aren't the only team to suffer from something like this, look at Madrid after the departure of Makelele or even the impact losing Thomas Gravesen had on Everton who are still struggling to get back to where they were beforehand. The importance of your physical, bust a gut type players cannot be overstated, these are the players that give their more skilfull brethern the time and space to work magic with the ball and score some incredible goals. Without that support and presence in your team you will always struggle to find long-term and consistent success.

Dub13

Article 2

Why I love football.

We've all been in the same situation. We're in a pub, there's football on, its not even our team, but at some random moment we start shouting/cursing/smiling/laughing. The entire table looks at you like you're a freak. You're lucky its not your team, then all hell would break loose. Whenever I meet a new girlfriend, it eventually comes out that I like football.

I try to avoid as long as possible the situation where she is with me at a match, because its entirely possible at that moment she decides she never wants to sleep with you again.

Why do I love to watch football at all?

I think its an appreciation for human skill. People who have perfected something to an extremely high level evokes a sense of amazement from all who see it. Somebody has perfect balance who can walk across the twin towers on a wire just amazes people. Somebody who can see every single possible move on a chess board is just astounding.
Somebody who can kick a ball so perfectly that it goes to the same place every single time is just an amazing ability.

Some pieces of skill are just downright jawdropping. One such example was Berbatov a couple of weeks ago. He was sprinting full speed, the ball was going out of play, there was a defender to his right. Somehow he managed to stop the ball, switch it to his other foot, clip it over the defenders leg, but keep it far enough away from the goalkeeper, all while shifting his weight so that he could stop instantly, turn around and catch up with ball. This was all done in the space of 1 second.

Why is football so much better than other sports [which it is ]

For me, football, along with some other sports (NFL for example), require a combination of physical ability, skill and intelligence that you just don't see in other sports. Sprinting for example, while the speeds that they reach is just incredible, just doesn't astound me. Few Olympic sports do.
For me its because that sprinting alone just isn't that impressive, its good, but not great. Sometimes the pace of Ronaldo, Torres or Messi is just amazing, but what is really amazing is that they can run close to the speed of those sprinters, and do it while dribbling the ball, with perfect control, and constantly analysing the situation to see what to do with it.
It's just a higher level.

You could say the same about Basketball, Water Polo or GAA, but ultimately, numbers who play the game dictate how high a level it is at. Football is by far the biggest sport in the world, and that's why its played to such a high level. If GAA was played by as many people as is played by football, I'd wager the game would be unrecognisable to its current form.

But you could say the same stuff about Art, Architecture, Medicine, Philosophy or whatever. All of these things require incredible skill. But the thing about sport, and football is particular, is that you can feel a part of sport so much more than you can ever feel a part of any of the other things. You can go through the emotions that the players go through. You can't do that with Art. You can't feel what Michaelanglo felt when he painted the Sistine Chapel.

This is the thing with football, you commit. The more you give to it, the more you get out of it. There are loads of plastic fans who watch the champions league games of your team, the big 4 clashes, and the final matches. When you win, they celebrate with you. But in reality, they are nowhere near as happy as you. When you've gone through every single game, watched every minute of your team that year, winning really means something. You feel connected, as if you've done it yourself.

This is a pretty illogical thing to think. Maybe you could make a roundabout argument that you had a big effect on the crowd, which lifted the team, and I'm not denying thats a factor. But its a minor factor, despite what Liverpool fans think ☺. Ultimately the victory belongs to the players. But you still feel just as happy probably as they do.

I think its because you commit so much time into the team, at least 2 hours a week just watching, normally 4. Then theres the build up to the matches, the nerves the entire days before big games, sometimes making you sick to your stomach. This isn’t to count the amount of time you spend on boards defending your team.
All of those things add up to an awful lot of hours feeling something about your team. So when your team wins on the pitch, the relief/satisfaction/joy, while probably incomparable to what the footballers feel, for an average person, with a normal work ethic, is beyond anything you are likely to experience. There's very little most of us will do with our lives that we put this level of effort into, with a clear result, just after the effort. Work doesn’t work like that, it’s a long term thing. Maybe the leaving cert has a similar sort of effort required, but the results don’t come out till months later.

When my team won the champions league, what did I do for that? I watched every single game that season in the CL, and every single game in the other comps. That’s about 60 games, 100 hours or so. I probably spent at least an hour discussing the game on boards over the course of a few days, so that’s another 100. Then of course, there was the pre match rituals which we all do, so that’s another 50 at least, when you take into account the 5 hours before a big game you cant do anything. We’re looking at 250 hours assuming a bare minimum, probably much more. That’s an awful lot of time, when you consider that theres 8760 hours in a year. That’s nearly 1/24th of my waking life a year. We put the work in, in a weird way. Its not as illogical as it seems to others.

When we won the CL, I actually can't remember being happier in my life, pure esctasy.

Dub13

Article 3

What a Difference a few years makes in Football

In January 2006 David O’Leary told the press how he had to send Eirik Bakke, a loanee from then championship side, Leeds United back to them as we couldn’t even afford to keep him. There was problems, big problems at Villa Park.

They completed the season and narrowly avoided relegation with Gareth Barry and James Milner holding the side together even though they also couldn’t afford to hold onto the latter. Fans weren’t happy, the manager wasn’t happy and clearly chairman Doug Ellis wasn’t happy. It was time for him to step aside, the fans knew it, the players knew it, the manager knew it and more importantly, Doug knew it himself. The club was up for sale and Doug Ellis asked Rothschilds to help out to try and find an investor for the club.

Speculation continued over takeover talks and very quickly the same bunch of players were back in training and clearly not pleased with the lack of activity at Villa Park. A player’s statement was released questioning the board’s penny pinching and cost cutting which left “Deadly” Doug Ellis fuming. The chairman set up a four man panel to investigate recent goings on at Villa Park. this investigation lead to David O’Leary being sacked as Villa manager.

On August 4th 2006, there seemed to be a bit of light at the end of the tunnel for us Villa fans. Martin O’Neill was appointed Villa boss in what was possibly Doug Ellis’ most popular move as Villa chairman ever. Ironically that was his last. Randy Lerner, an American Billionaire agreed to take over the club and this is where the clubs fortunes completely changed.

Randy Lerner, the quiet American, has been an example to other chairmen of how the job should be done since taking the reins. He gives his manager, Martin O’Neil full control of all team affairs and transfers. He has also made huge investment into the club since taking over both on and off the field. An obvious example of which is the big improvements to Villa’s now state of the art Bodymore heath training ground, which now rivals that of any premiership club http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJNrBMwakJI). Mr Lerner has also made sure that Villa unlike many other big premiership clubs is debt free and kept the wage bill at the club under control despite a big influx of new signings.

The 2006-2007 season saw Villa finish 11th, comfortably. They were playing good football and with some very bright prospects for the future, most notably Gabriel Agbonlahor. The following season O’Neill made more improvements to his squad especially in January when John Carew and Ashley young were purchased and Villa finished the season emphatically in 6th place. This position was well deserved and ensured European football returned to Villa Park.

And now looking forward once more to January 09, just over three years on from those dark days, Villa lie a point off 4th place having just beaten Arsenal at The Emirates. They have essentially progresed from their European group, and have a very talented squad that is capable of going far in the next few years. Infact they are the only team that pundits and fans alike see as being able to potentially break the big top four monopoly held by Chelsea, Man Utd, Liverpool and Arsenal this year, and in doing so earning themselves a champions league birth.
It has been a long road back for former European champions Aston Villa but thus far they have made huge strides towards insuring they are not only the biggest club in England’s second city but one of the biggest in the country. To quote Martin O’Neil “This club won the biggerest prize in European football and its prizes like that we want to be competing for here at Villa Park, and it’s my aim to get the club to that position”

In my honest opinion, Aston Villa are real example of What a difference a few years can make in the fortunes of a premiership club In a positive way in contrast to so many negative ones we here all to often this year. It can give the fans a lot of pride to support such a club when they hear about the Luton’s and Leeds of this world.

Dub13

Article 4

Mens Game?

Remember when footballers used to be manly men? Tough ****ers who could give, and withstand, the meatiest of challenges. They would surge around the pitch, long hair flowing and ‘taches only a real man could grow, whistling in the wind. The closest we have to those days now is Jimmy Bullard. The game has changed folks. We have the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and Drogba flailing themselves to the ground and grabbing body parts as though fearing they might come off. It’s by no means just the blow ins though, the likes of Joe Cole, and many others are no better.

Realistically we have to accept these, as what they’re doing is using the rules however they can to get what they can, and to that end, I’m pointing my finger in another direction. Referees’, and those who govern them. This season has been like nothing I have ever seen before in this regard. It seems like the goalposts have not only been moved from the old days, they’ve been dug up and shifted to a whole new field altogether! In the very recent past, a fairly simple mistimed tackle was no major deal. If a player committed too many of them, they’d get a booking. It seems all too familiar now, however, that we see a player’s first tackle of the match be punished, putting him on eggshells for the remaining 80 or so minutes. Why the escalation? All it has done is lead to a record number of yellow cards by this period of any season in the top flight. A staggering 482 bookings have been amassed over the course of 149 games so far.

For me, this simply doesn’t make any sense. I’ve always viewed the disciplinary system as a necessary evil. It would be nice if we could trust players not to hurt each other, but that would be ridiculous. Dangerous or malicious play must be dealt with, of course, and those with no regard for their fellow players need to be taken from the field of play. A red card was always something serious, shameful, and a rarity. Now? An innocuous slightly late challenge coupled with a silly incident such as not giving the ball directly back to the opposition for a set piece, can see a player escorted from the field leaving the game as an uneven contest. I have to ask, is this really the answer?

Every so often we hear a representative of the referees telling us how this week’s ref actually made the right decision in awarding a soft red card, because this is in line with a new directive to stamp out whatever type of tackle-of-the-week is frowned upon. This is fair enough in some cases. For example the tackle from behind was done away with which was a good thing as it was dangerous, reckless, and most importantly meant a defender would find it very difficult to take the ball before the man. That makes sense. But what doesn’t make so much sense is where we see what used to be a perfectly decent tackle, now ruled as a bookable offence. There are several incidents of this type of reaction, but the first that comes to mind is Stephen Gerrard’s from earlier this season against Chelsea. In this case, Bosingwa, the Chelsea fullback, was advancing through the middle of the park. He was sprinting, so was knocking the ball a little ahead of himself, to maintain maximum speed. Gerrard was running to intercept, and as Bosingwa again touched the ball ahead of himself, Gerrard threw himself at it, managing a strong one footed challenge and winning the ball which began a counter attack. Great football. Except that it wasn’t. The ref called back play, and issued Gerrard with a booking. Why? A former ref that evening stated that Gerrard was reckless, but how reckless can one be to judge the speed of an opponent, ones own speed, the weight of the ball as its pushed forward, and then manage to combine all these factors into a successful tackle.

I think it’s time that Michele Platini and others responsible realise that a non contact sport is not the way forward. We need our players to be able to be strong and brave, not have them worrying every time they see a split second opening to dispossess an opponent. Give us back our Mans Game.

Dub13

Article 5


F.C. Barcelona – More than a club

Inside the vast walls of the Camp Nou, the UEFA 5 star rated facility that is the home of F.C Barcelona, emblazoned on the seats in the middle tier of the uncovered grandstand, where nowadays you would normally expect to find a corporate logo or the logo of the clubs shirt manufacturer, instead reads the phrase “Mes Que Un Club”, literally meaning “More than a club”. It is a mantra that rings particularly true for this great club and one which is especially close to the hearts of the loyal Barcelona supporters, as is shown by the mosaic of the phrase which is regularly seen in the Nou Camp before big games. You see, Barcelona are not so much a football club to their loyal supporters as much as they are an identity to the people of Catalonia. Their supporters, known as “Cules” (meaning “arse people” – a phrase stemming from their early days when supporters would sit on the top tier and all that would be visible from outside the ground would be their backsides!) are known as some of the most passionate in world football. They are now, a far cry from the mere football club they were formed as in 1899, when Joan Gamper placed an ad in a local newspaper seeking players for a team. For the people of Catalonia, F.C Barcelona is a source of great pride and great tradition.

The club famously holds a rivalry with real Madrid. Both clubs represent very different cultures and traditions with Madrid representing the Catile region and Barca representing Catalonia. Under the reign of the Spanish dictator General Francisco Franco, the club became a symbol of strength to the Catalan people. The long standing and famous rivalry with Real Madrid stems from this time. Real Madrid are known in Spain as the “Kings Club” and are a representation of everything that the establishment and Franco’s regime stood for whereas Barcelona represented the freedom and identity of the Catalan people. This rivalry in many ways transcends football. It became more heated after the controversial transfer to Real Madrid of Alfredo di Stefano who had previously signed a deal with Barcelona only to be swayed to Madrid to huge political influence. Madrid claimed Barcelona voluntarily allowed him to join them whilst Barcelona insisted that they were pressured out of the deal by Franco’s government. Whichever side you choose to believe, it certainly strengthened the disdain both clubs already had for each other. This derby, known as “El Clásico”, is regarded as the biggest rivalry in world football.

Barcelona are also an unusual club in that they are not owned by any billionaires be they Russians, Americans, Saudi’s or otherwise. They are a club run by its members in the tradition of a club (and yet were still listed at the end of the 2006-2007 season as the third richest club in the world). This allows them to retain the feel of the entity being a club rather than a business. The owners/members of the club are known as “socis” and there are known to be more than 150,000 socis worldwide. The “club feel” is further strengthened by FC Barcelona running teams in women’s football, ice hockey, rugby union, volleyball and a range of other sports.

Interestingly, Barcelona have never received money from any corporate entity for shirt sponsorship. In fact, up until the summer of 2006, the clubs jersey had never had any sponsorship on it besides the small logo of the shirt manufacturer. In 2006, Barca took the decision to allow the logo for UNICEF (United Nations Children's Fund) to be put on their jerseys in a deal which, unusually, will see FC Barcelona donate 1.9million US Dollars per year to the charity.

In previous eras, clubs like Ajax Amsterdam and Manchester United, and, more recently, Arsenal, have been praised for their willingness to promote youth from within their club. Barcelona have always sought to bring their young players through to the first team (in keeping with the tradition of having Catalans in the team) and the club has produced some of the best players in the world with this philosophy. Current Arsenal sensation Cesc Fabregas is a Barcelona Youth Academy product, as is Argentinean Lionel Messi. In the current team alone, the club maintains its Catalan traditions with a strong representation provided by Carles Puyol, Victor Valdes, Gerard Pique, Sergio Busquets, Andres Iniesta, Xavi Hernandez and Bojan Krkic. With a Catalan manager in charge of the club, in Josep (Pep) Guardiola, the club has returned to the strong Catalan traditions of years gone past and has tapped in once again, to the identity and pride that is the very heart of F.C Barcelona.

It is not only the youth academy that produces first team players. Barcelona also have a track record for signing and attracting some of the greatest plaers that ever played the game. Any club which has been home to such footballing greats as Cruyff, Neeskens, Maradona, Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Romario, Stoichkov, Luis Figo, Ronaldinho, etc, will always have to have something particularly special about it. In this case it is a tradition of greatness. Cruyff, interestingly, became so enamoured with the club that he chose a Catalan name, “Jordi”, for his son.

Barcelona has always been a unique club. In a time when Catalans were marginalized it became a vehicle for their voice to be heard. It is an identity to them even to this day, and many Catalans view the club as a kind of “Catalan national team.” The club is very much the leading symbol of the identity of the Catalan people. FC Barcelona – Mes Que Un Club.

Dub13

Article 6


A Fair Game?

Sport in general and football in particular is a great opportunity to showcase fairness and equality among men (and women). We have heard of the phrase ‘level playing field’, used to describe something equal. That is what football offers, a level playing field that gives no advantage to either team, and a contest in which victory must be earned. There is no advantage to be had from race or social class on the football pitch. No team is guaranteed victory by either the talent of their players or the physical stature of those players. Many games are won by technically gifted teams, but then many games are lost to more determined teams. An obvious point but one that emphasises that any team CAN beat any other team at any time. This is what makes football so special. There is one factor that i have left out that can affect the balance of a football match. The wealth of a club. The English Premier League in the last few year has seen a concentration of success in a small number of football teams. Every august there is debate on whether or not some other team can break into the top four. Apart from the refreshing change last season no team outside the ‘top four’ has won a domestic trophy since 2002. Chelsea are said to have bought the success they have experienced since a billionaire bought the club. Manchester united have been the most successful club in England for the past decade and have also been the richest for much of that period. Arsenal and Liverpool, while not being in the same category of United or Chelsea have still dominated the rich lists of England for the last few years. These four teams are frequently the biggest spenders in the transfer markets, and are able to afford the highest wages. The Champions League revenue going to these teams helps keep them ahead of the ambitious wannabes. The success and enhanced visibility of these teams because of their success also allows them to access new markets and so to more money, and so a cycle becomes visible. Another problem developing in English football and which, i think, will become more evident in the future is the money generated by the premier league. The new TV deal that has been negotiated will bring more money into the Premier League than before. This money is more even than the Champions League generates. What we will see in English football in the future is not just a concentration of success among a small nucleus of rich clubs but also a concentration of teams that play in the premier league. Relegated teams will benefit from the money they have earned in the league at the expense of teams that have not played in the top division. The same teams will continue to be promoted and relegated season after season. This is already evident in the fact that in the last five seasons only four promoted teams are still in the premier league. Out of fifteen teams promoted nine were relegated in their first season. The distance between the haves and have nots of English football is startling and will continue to worsen. Foreign investment by billionaires, while seen as bad thing by some, may well help balance out the discrepancies between the rich and poor. But it will also enhance the difference between the top division and the lower ones. Some may not think this is important, that this is modern football. There have always been successful clubs and the rest, Liverpool dominated English football in the seventies and eighties just as Manchester United do now. The Italian and Spanish leagues have dominant teams too. But we are already risking losing traditional clubs to oblivion, as clubs struggling with debt face administration and the loss of their league status. Managers lose their jobs more frequently because clubs literally can not afford to lose games. This seems an odd fact considering English football is more flush with money than ever before, but that money is concentrated in a small amount of clubs. This guarantees the success and future of these clubs, but condemns others to relative poverty. This is a sport that congratulates itself for fair play. Where is the fairness in enriching some and not others? Where is the fairness when the best a newly promoted team can hope to achieve in the future is fifth place? It may not bother some, but when money is most important thing in sport is it still a sport?

Dub13

Article 7

Til death do us part – remembering those who died playing the game we love

SATURDAY, August 25th, 2007 will forever rank as one of the saddest days in Spanish football history. Sevilla were taking on Getafe in a La Liga game when, on 31 minutes, defender Antonio Puerta collapsed in his own penalty area. Despite being able to walk off the field, doctors said he had a heart attack in the dressing room, and at least one more in the emergency room of the Seville hospital where he was taken. After three days in intensive care, Puerta died, leaving a nation to mourn the loss of one of its brightest stars. It was later reported that Puerta had suffered multiple organ failure and irreversible brain damage as a result of multiple prolonged cardiac arrests due to an incurable, hereditary heart disease known as arrhythmogenic right ventricular cardiomyopathy.

Sevilla returned to the field just days after Puerta’s death as they lost 2-1 to AC Milan in the European Super Cup. Both sets of players wore Puerta's name on their jerseys underneath their shirt numbers, and a minute's silence was observed while flags at the Stade Louis II were flown at half staff. Milan chanted Puerta's name and draped a banner reading Onore a Puerta (Honour to Puerta) from their end of the stadium. Sevilla's section featured several banners in homage to him. One simply read "Puerta 16", honouring the player's name and his squad number. "We wanted to win to dedicate the game to Antonio [Puerta], but we at least played well," said Sevilla boss Juande Ramos.

Approximately 10,000 people turned up for the funeral which took place in the Andalucían city. Just two months after his death, Puerta’s girlfriend gave birth to their first child, a boy named Aitor Antonio Puerta Roldan, who was immediately made an honorary member of the football club.

Rewind four years to the summer of 2003 and specifically to semi final of the Confederations Cup between Cameroon and Colombia. Midway through the second half Cameroon midfielder Marc Vivien Foe collapsed in the middle of the pitch with nobody around him. Doctors tried for 45 minutes to resuscitate Foe with no success.
Team captain Rigobert Song later revealed the poignant half time words Foe had issued his team mates. “Yesterday at half-time, his last words were ‘Boys, even if it means dying on the pitch, we must win this semi-final’. And he was the victim. It's terrible.” After a first autopsy to find the cause of death proved inconclusive, a second later revealed hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, and concluded that Foe's death was heart-related.

Foe had just spent a successful season on loan at Manchester City in the Premiership and was a one-time transfer target for Manchester United. Manchester City later retired the number 23 shirt that Foe had worn at the club, while Lyon, another of his former teams, retired the number 17 in his honour.

Just months after the Foe tragedy, Hungarian international Miklos Feher collapsed and died while playing for Benfica in the Portuguese league. Having just received a yellow card in injury time against Vitoria S.C., Feher suddenly fell backwards clutching his chest. Players immediately rushed to his aid and he was given CPR on the field. However he could not be revived. The Public Prosecutor (the Portuguese agency responsible for the release of autopsy details) later announced that Feher died of a heart attack. The club subsequently retired his number 29 shirt.

Heart failure also claimed the life of Motherwell midfielder Phil O’Donnell late last year. The 35 year old former Celtic star and Scottish international was just about to be substituted in a league game against Dundee United when he collapsed and died. A post-mortem revealed the cause of death to be specifically a failure of the left ventricle. Motherwell announced that the name of the main stand at their Fir Park ground would be renamed The Phil O'Donnell Stand as a permanent tribute to the player. O’Donnell’s team mates played out the 2007/08 season with his signature embroidered on their shirts.

Other less high profile, but equally tragic, incidents have claimed the lives of Chaswe Nsofwa, Matt Gadsby, Guy Tchingoma, Mohamed Abdelwahab and Catalin Hildan amongst others in the last ten years alone.

Thankfully onfield deaths are very rare considering the amount of games played on a weekly basis, and advances in medicine have made it possible for hereditary heart conditions to be diagnosed in advance. World Cup winner and France’s most capped player Lillian Thuram took the decision to prematurely end his playing career earlier this year having been diagnosed with a heart condition, saying that some things are more important things than football, a sentiment no doubt echoed by the families of Puerta, Foe, Feher and O’Donnell.