5 footballers who lost their lives while playing the game they loved

Football is and always has been ‘the beautiful game,’ but sometimes there are incidents that cast a shadow over it and bring into sharp focus that it is still just a game after all. Mercifully, though it doesn’t happen often as there have been cases where players have either died on the pitch whilst playing that game that they love, or in hospital shortly afterwards.

It’s something incomprehensible, given that it occurs in those so young, and to bear witness to something so tragic is both shocking and numbing. Often, and for obvious reasons, such occurrences are kept out of the news, but on occasions, such tragedy has befallen those players in top flight football.

Here are five footballers who lost their lives while playing the game they loved.

#1 Miklos Feher (Age 24): Benfica v Vitoria, January 24, 2004

A game that was being broadcast live on Portuguese television had, for the most part, been a decent, competitive encounter and Feher had come on looking to help Benfica break the deadlock in what had been, until his introduction, a goalless match.

The Hungarian had proved his worth by providing the game-winning assist, but deep into injury-time, he decided to waste a few seconds, something for which he was handed a yellow card by the official.

TV footage shows Feher wryly smiling at the referee before crouching forward, hands on his thighs. Falling backwards with no players near him, he was gone before lying prone on the turf.

Though an ambulance would come onto the pitch and rush him to the hospital, sadly it was a journey made in vain, and his death was announced some three hours later. In tribute to the player, Benfica retired his No.29 shirt.