A week is a long time in football as they say. And its been an awfully long week. One no doubt overshadowed by the death of Sevilla defender Antonio Puerta. Sevilla and Spain fans know him as a fine leftback, with occasional forays as a left winger, as a member of a most impressive Sevilla team that conquered the Uefa Cup in consecutive seasons, a feat most rare. They also know him as a promising player, ready to burst onto the international scene, to help Spain in their quest to dominate world football. Alas, at the age of twenty-two, his career is over. A series of severe heart attacks during the game against Getafe, and after coming off, put him into a coma that he never woke up from.
Thousands the world over in football have mourned his death this past week, and the grief has been heartfelt. AC Milan, Sevilla's opponents in the European Super Cup, offered to postpone the meaningless fixture. Uefa and the Spanish league postponed Sevilla's Champion's League qualifier with AEK Athens and the Primera Liga fixture against Osasuna, respectively, in respect of Puerta. But the greatest of all gestures happened in the city of Seville itself. The two halves of the city, so bitterly divided between Real Betis and Sevilla, united in grief for one of their own, with both sets of fans bemoaning the loss of Puerta, some openly crying in the streets outside the hospital where Puerta spent the last of his days, as well as around Sevilla's home ground. Even the presidents of the two clubs, infamous for the vitoril in their words against the other, hugged in public, in a sign that the city was one for Puerta. Perhaps a sign of better things to come between the two arch-rivals?
Even then, it would be of little comfort to Puerta's wife, and unborn child, due in five weeks. The city of Seville could become one and whole again, above all the bitterness normally associated with local rival clubs, and it would never bring back Puerta. Nothing will bring him back, but the football authorities could help prevent a tragedy like that from unfolding again.
Puerta isn't the first man to die playing the game, Marc Vivien Foe of Cameroon the last example four years ago. Although their deaths have more to do with underlying conditions that are next-to-impossible to detect with in the first place, there is, without a doubt, too much football for the players. At the top clubs, teams can play over 60 games a season, or about one every five to six days all throughout the year. Adding in fifteen international games a year that all top nations must fulfill and you get a glut of matches. Thats putting the bodies of the players through sheer physical and mental strain. The fact that the much-criticized rotation policy is becoming common even in smaller clubs is an alarm sign in itself. Surely now, the powers-that-be have to do something about it.
There are just far too many meaningless "tournaments", and its time to cut them off the calendar. The above-mentioned European Super Cup, the Conferations Cup, the Intertoto Cup, the World Club Championship, the League Cup in England, the list just goes on. Even much-cherished tournaments have grown too big, and too many games are becoming meaningless. The European club competitons, for example, allow entry to too many teams, many of whom don't deserve to be there. How about following the Asian club competition example of teams from stronger footballing nations in one tournament, and teams from weaker footballing nations in another?
Puerta will never have the chance to see his child grow up, but the powers-that-be in football can help ensure that other players will have that chance.
For Puerta.
