A few minutes before halftime in today’s Tottenham/Bolton FA Cup match, 23-year-old Bolton midfielder Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the pitch.
I wasn’t watching live, but I was DVRing the match. Muamba did not show any signs of sluggishness or another characteristic from which an observer could infer something was wrong. But something decidedly was. Thankfully, the cameras were not trained on efforts to save Muamba’s life; the direness of the situations was evident in the tone and expressions of those watching a match that would be halted.
Updates via soccer-knowledgeable Twitter friends:
@StAnguiano 23 yr old Fabrice Muamba of BWFC, collapsed on the pitch 41′ – electric paddles out…gone to hospital, cardiac arrest feared.
@reasonabledoubt They tried to resuscitate him for ten minutes, including a defibrillator. Wasn’t breathing as they stretchered him off.
@mj_chandler Muamba collapsed face-down on the pitch. All attempts to revive him failed as he wasn’t breathing. Saw it live. Terrible.
From the Guardian:
42 min Fabrice Muamba appears to have suffered a very nasty injury. I’m not sure precisely what happened, but you can tell from the grave tone of the ESPN commentator Jon Champion – and the body language of the players – that this is extremely serious. Rafael Van der Vaart has his hands over his face, and ESPN’s Jon Champion says that there are attemps to resuscitate Muamba. This is awful. All the players are in complete shock.
45+1 min After a brief chant of Fabrice Muamba’s name, the crowd falls silent once more. Nigel Reo Coker is on his knees, resting his chin on his fist.
45+2 min Attempts to resuscitate Muamba are still ongoing, and apparently a defibrilator has been used. This is just horrible.
45+3 min Muamba is now on a stretcher, and is being carried off. This does not mean he has been resuscitated; apparently they are still attempting to do that. The Bolton chairman Phil Gartside is down at the pitchside, talking to Howard Webb and Owen Coyle. How can you carry on a game after this?
6.56pm Bolton have released a short formal statement to confirm the horrific events of the past hour.
Bolton Wanderers can confirm that Fabrice Muamba has been taken to hospital following his collapse at White Hart Lane this evening during the FA Cup quarter-final.
There is no further information at this stage.
7.01pm Apparently Owen Coyle and Kevin Davies were in the ambulance with Muamba.
7.07pm For those who did not experience the incident when it happened, there were no players near Muamba when he collapsed. Within 10 or 20 seconds it became apparent that something very serious had happened, and we soon found out that he had stopped breathing. He was treated on the field for almost 10 minutes, with a defibrilator used in an attempt to resuscitate him, before being taken off on a stretcher. Howard Webb took the players off the field, and the game was officially abandoned a few moments later.
The last we heard was that Muamba was on his way to hospital, that he was not breathing and that he was still receiving CPR. That was 35 minutes ago.
7.15pm There is still no further information. It’s been almost 45 minutes since Muamba was taken away from White Hart Lane in an ambulance.
Horrible. Just horrible. Reminds me of that day when Hank Gathers collapsed on a basketball court, a death which launched a mission to have defibrillators more accessible than in the past because of situations just like Muamba’s.
UPDATE: Latest reports are that the hospital says he’s been stabilized, as in, he may well survive what looked like a heart attack suffered in front of tens of thousands of people.
