Jon West
Within half an hour White Hart Lane was all but empty.
The 36,000 fans of Tottenham and Bolton had departed after witnessing just 41 minutes of a game that was brought to a sudden and shocking halt by the collapse of Fabrice Muamba on the White Hart Lane pitch.
Among those who remained were the media, who had arrived at the ground thinking they were there for nothing more than the excitement and tension that an FA Cup quarter-final brings. Just as Muamba had himself of course.
They had already filed eye-witness reports of how the 23-year-old had fallen face down upon the turf with no other player near him, how medics had battled to revive him via mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and the use of a defibrillator. How the other players looked on in horror and concern while all of this went on, minute by minute.
The phrase “fighting for his life” was inevitably used but at the time no-one was sure whether that was actually true: the player had not been breathing when he was hurriedly taken down the tunnel to begin his journey to the Heart Attack Centre at the London Chest Hospital. The fear he might already have suffered the same fate as Marc-Vivien Foe, who collapsed and died in 2003 while representing Cameroon, was in everyone’s minds.
Eventually word came that Muamba’s condition had been described as stable, which sounded hopeful. Later Owen Coyle, the Bolton manager who had accompanied his player in the ambulance along with club captain Kevin Davies, emerged to say that Muamba was still classed as “critically ill” as he received his top-quality intensive care.
It was through Davies that it was confirmed that Muamba was indeed “fighting for his life” via texts to BBC Football Focus presenter Dan Walker. “Encouragingly, he said Fabrice is showing real fight which is the best possible news,” Walker said. “Kevin says he is not giving up and he’s digging in and showing a bit of battle.”
That was entirely in keeping with the midfielder’s playing style: Muamba himself had previously admitted he was not the most technically gifted member of the Premier League elite but worked as hard as any to achieve success.
“I’m not the most talented footballer, but I know what I can do and what I need to do to stay where I am,” he said last year. “I just keep myself to myself and enjoy what I have. I want to enjoy all life can give to me.”
Muamba’s has been no ordinary life either.
It began in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo in April 1988 just before the nation, then known as Zaire, became engulfed in a civil war that may have cost as many as five million their lives.
“It stopped us going out to play football, because we were scared we would get killed,” Muamba once said of the gunfire. “One or two of my friends were hurt.”
The Muambas were no ordinary Zaire family either. Claude, his father, was an adviser to the prime minister Kengo Wa Dondo and one morning told his children he was going out. In fact, he was on his way to Britain to seek political asylum and it was not until December 1999 that the rest of the family were able to join him in London.
A new life at Kelmscott School in Walthamstow, not far from White Hart Lane, was waiting for him. Initially he spoke no English but soon excelled in his studies, especially in maths. His sporting achievements were even more impressive as by 2002 he was on Arsenal’s books.
Muamba learned the game as a young Gunner but became an England U21 international and a regular first-teamer at Birmingham, who signed him for £4m in May 2007 after a loan spell
It was Gary Megson who brought Muamba to Bolton for £5m but it was under Coyle that he began to see his reputation as a midfield enforcer enhanced.
“We’ve been inundated with people wishing him well and we hope that if everybody can pray strongly tonight that Fabrice is able to recover,” Coyle said. “It’s very serious. There’s not getting away from that. He’s critically ill and God willing he makes it through.”
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/puJml9H6OKg/post.aspx
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