Health Problems Persist In Football

March 20, 2012 - PRLog -- Saturday's abandoned FA Cup match, between Tottenham Hotspur and Bolton Wanderers highlighted a problem in football that is seldom seen in England.

Over the last 10 years, it's certainly not been unheard of as a problem, with Spanish shores seeing more than most of this horrible ordeal. The most recent cases being Ruben De La Red, Antonio Puerta, Daniel Jarque and for a name closer to English homes, Marc Vivien Foe. Only one of the above made it through to tell his tale, Ruben De La Red but he's had to quit what was a hugely promising career with Real Madrid due to his condition. He is now a coach for the Madrid youth set up at 26 years old, he retired in late 2010.

It's a problem that has only really been highlighted in the last 20 years, cases were, strangely, far more sporadic in the earlier days. What was so shocking about the latest instance, of Fabrice Muamba, was that he'd been tested by his club, Bolton, for heart issues just a mere 8 months ago in teh summer's close season and they couldn't find a single thing wrong with him. It just goes to show how serious issues with heart are, as they are so hard to detect even when tested by the world's most advanced equipment.

What's more worrying is that there's an apparent trend setting. The fitter these players seem to become, the more and more they appear to be struck down. It's perhaps not a coincidence that this is the case though and there will probably be numerous scientific papers published in the coming months that look into this problem in a far, far greater depth, the results may be surprising.

As for Muamba, it's early days. The signs are certainly promising for him though as he's already began speaking and recognising family members who have been to visit him. His recovery has in fact been remarkable and it's probably that mental and physical strength, that has seen him through so far. As I said though, he's certainly not out of the woods yet, stranger things have happened and on the football front, well, they are far murkier waters. It would be a minor miracle to see the midfielder play again, they'd first have to find what his specific condition is, which can be along tenuous process and depending on the type and severity, that will decide whether he's able to play competitively any more. This could take more than a year to realistically do, luckily Fabrice has time on his side. It's going to be an incredibly emotional and interesting tale, seeing what unfolds from here on in. Good luck Fabrice.

We live in a world where things are taken for granted, where our reliance and consequent confidence on technology means that we don't see anything with faults, we don't expect a machine to not detect a problem. There is still much work to be done and let's hope that this issue can be minimised even further over the coming years.