On Sunday, AS Roma had an away game against Udinese; I gave the game a miss because I had other stuff, but I thought I'd check the score after the game ended, only to find it was suspended in the 71st minute. One of the players, Evan Ndicka, had collapsed on the field while clutching his chest.
He's fine; he had to be taken to the hospital, but the injury appears to be from a collision with another player, not a cardiac event. It's always scary when a player falls like that regardless of the sport, but even the talking heads agree this was handled extremely well -- the fans fell silent so the EMTs could work, the coaches and captains agreed to suspend the game, and de Rossi, who is still very new to coaching at all let alone as head of a Serie A team, kept his wits about him, got the EMTs onto the field for Ndicka, and put his players first.
The most touching part of the whole narrative, however, isn't the good behavior of fans and staff or that the entire team all went to the hospital to see him -- it's that his inseparable best friend on the team, Houssem Aouar (on the left in the third picture), petitioned the hospital to be allowed to stay overnight with him. Request denied, but still a very sweet gesture.
[ID: Three images of Evan Ndicka, a center-back for Italian football team AS Roma; in the first he is being carried on a stretcher off the field, surrounded by teammates and medical staff, while in the second he is sitting up in a hospital bed, attached to monitors but with an upraised arm and a smile to show he's all right. The third image shows him in a black suit, entering a stadium before a game, sharing a friendly look with Houssem Aouar, midfielder for Roma.]
