It’s not something any of us think about whenever we watch a game of football. After all, with 22 fit, professional players running around in peak condition, it’s not really something that should even cross our minds. How scary is it, then, that in less than a week, professional football was hit with the deaths of two active professionals, and saw a third one rushed to hospital because of heart problems?

The passing of Seville’s Antonio Puerta shocked the football world, after he collapsed after suffering a heart attack during their game against Getafe. Videos from Spanish TV’s coverage of the game show teammates and the Seville medical staff rushing to Puerta to stop him from swallowing his tongue, before eventually resuscitating the 22-year-old, who was able to walk off the field relatively unassisted. Upon reaching the changing rooms, Puerta collapsed again and was subsequently rushed to hospital, where he was placed in intensive care before he passed away on August 28. A day later, Zambian international Chaswe Nsofwa passed away after collapsing during a training session with Israeli side Hapoel Beersheba.

Hours after Puerta’s passing, our own Clive Clarke ended up in the headlines after he collapsed in the Leicester City dressing room at half time of their Carling Cup tie at Nottingham Forest. The match was abandoned as the 27-year-old needed resuscitating following two separate heart failures, before he too was taken to hospital. Thankfully, his condition improved as he remained in hospital for observation, but it only served to hammer home the sudden concern over footballers’ health.

The sad thing is, all of these incidents took place in less than a week and they are not the only footballers who have suffered from heart-related problems. Perhaps most famously in this country would be the death of (then) Manchester City midfielder Marc-Vivien Foé, who collapsed and died at the age of 28 after having a heart attack during a Confederations Cup game between Cameroon and Colombia in June 2003. A little over six months later, Hungarian striker Miklós Fehér also collapsed and died during a game for Benfica against Vitoria, dying just at 24 years old. Then there are the players who had somewhat of a lucky escape, like Luton’s Sol Davis, who suffered a stroke last October.

Of course, this isn’t anything like professional wrestling, where active competitors seem to be dying at an alarming rate from steroid-induced heart-attacks, but in a relatively small world of professional footballers, perhaps we should be looking a little closer, perhaps making medicals a little more stringent, performing electrocardiograms on players and checking for rare but potentially fatal conditions such as Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome. These tests won’t be needed on the vast majority of players, but if recent events have shown us anything, then perhaps clubs across the world should make a habit of doing them, if only to make sure that the game is doing all it can to make sure that the incidents of late August don’t repeat themselves.

Ian Hamilton