Another heart attack on the pitch: RIP Piermario Morosini
A few weeks back Bolton Wanderers’ Fabrice Muamba collapsed on the field during the team’s FA Cup quarterfinal match against Tottenham Hotspur. He was attended to by emergency staff on the pitch and eventually stretchered off and rushed to a hospital. Despite being “in effect, dead” for 78 minutes Muamba survived and is now recovering.
Today, another elite footballer had a heart attack during a game, and this time the news is tragic: Livorno’s Piermario Morosini died after collapsing early in the Italian Serie B side’s match with Pescara.
Morosini, 25, was rushed to hospital after medical staff attended to him on the pitch for a suspected heart attack, but died on arrival. The game was then called off with the other players leaving the field in tears.
“He suffered a cardiac arrest. Unfortunately he was already dead when the ambulance arrived. He never regained consciousness,” announced Doctor De Blasi.
Morosini once played for Italy’s Under-21 national team and was on loan from Serie A side Udinese.
Some of us in the S&R community are big fans of world football, and news like this, even when it concerns a player we don’t know much about, cannot help but darken the day. We watch these remarkable young athletes competing at a level most of us can barely dream of, and I think we sometimes forget how fragile life can be, even for the young and supremely talented.
RIP, Piermario.
lullaby pit 
I can only hope that they do more regular screens at the youth level to find the players with these rare conditions. Obviously some will slip trough the net, but with the amount of money in the game there really is no excuse for UEFA or FIFA not to cover the costs of the clubs at the bottom of the money spectrum.
I agree completely, Bret. I noted that after the Muamba incident a lot of players were demanding that their clubs check them for heart issues, and if there is a silver lining in this cloud anywhere I suppose that would be it.