Dempo striker dies after scoring goal

I saw this live on TV yesterday! And no, his death was not because of joy at scoring the goal. I switched on the TV (DD Sports) to see a replay of the goal being telecast. Just as the ball was shown going past the goalie into the goal, the right side of the screen captured the goalie putting in a horrendous tackle on the scorer (Christiano Junior). My instinctive reaction was - Shit, what a tackle! Actually, it can't be classified as a tackle. It was a heavy punch directly in the side of the striker's head, right under the ear at the base of the skull. The most vulnerable spot of any living thing. When live pictures were telecast again, the referee was frantically waving to the medics, and a Dempo player was hysterically pumping the striker's chest! What the shit I said to myself, the guy's probably dying!

The next ten minutes were a farce. Imagine players rubbing the palms and feet of the striker, someone arguing about giving artificial respiration, someone pumping his chest, others frantically praying, some too dumb-stricken to do anything but stare blankly! The very fact that the guy was dying, or was indeed already dead, just did not seem to register on the officials. All this time, the most despicable insensitive crap was being telecast in the name of commentary. The commentator kept saying the usual tripe - "Let's hope it's not a serious injury... looks like he's taken a bad knock... he's still lying on the ground." WTF??? The guy was DYING!

Finally, a full fifteen minutes after the fatal blow, an ambulance rolled up alongside the fallen striker. By this time I was convinced he was dead, because he didn't move a muscle when he was lifted on to the stretcher, and his arms and neck just flopped uselessly at the slightest push. Photographers were all over the place, clicking away with abandon. The ambulance departed, and the game resumed.

I switched to the news channels, but they were running a story of a death threat that had been issued to the Indian cricket team. No way they were going to cover the story of a football player who was possibly killed on the field! There was no news about him for the rest of the day. Today, the first thing I did on reaching work was visit the TimesofIndia website where it was confirmed that he indeed had died. The report painted an even more horrible picture! The ambulance did not have respiratory equipment, it took 25 more minutes to weave through traffic to get to the hospital, and it ended up at an orthopaedic clinic when a full-blown general hospital was practically right next to the stadium! Talk of irony and negligence! SHIT!