The players know immediately and instinctively when an injury is serious. Last night, concern at the collapse of the Bolton Wanderers midfielder Fabrice Muamba was instant, almost panic-stricken, summed up by the frantic gestures of the Tottenham player Rafael van der Vaart, who gestured urgently to the bench.
Medical staff from both clubs were called onto the field and a posse of paramedics surrounded Muamba, who was lying face down on the White Hart Lane turf. Suddenly, a rumbustious quarter-final cup-tie was stilled and an eerie, uneasy silence descended on all parts of the ground.
The scenes that followed will stay long in the mind, of Muamba’s feet twitching as he fought to stay alive and of the medics pushing and pushing to revive his heart; of Owen Coyle, the Bolton manager, running onto the field but turning back when he saw there was nothing he could do to help.
Muamba received cardiopulmonary resuscitation [CPR] treatment to revive his heartbeat and medics also used a defibrillator to shock his heart back to life.
Muamba was still being given CPR as he left the pitch and again in the ambulance taking him to the London Chest Hospital. Coyle and the Bolton club captain Kevin Davies, went with him to the hospital and a joint statement by Wanderers and the hospital released late last night said that the 23-year-old remained in a “critically ill condition in intensive care.”
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For what had seemed like an eternity after Muamba’s collapse, players and staff from both clubs stood on the touchline, all hoping that the player would somehow be revived, unable to absorb what they were seeing. Once he had been taken off on a stretcher there was no chance that the game, standing at 1-1 just three minutes before half-time, would continue. Howard Webb, the referee, took the players off for half-time early and news of the abandonment was not long delayed.
This will not be the first struggle of Muamba’s young life. When his father was forced to flee the former Zaire for political reasons to seek asylum in England, Muamba and his mother were left at home, fearful for their future. Though he has rarely talked about it, one of his uncles was murdered by the new regime.
So quickly did Muamba’s father have to leave the country, he told his nine-year-old son he was just going out for a moment. Fabrice did not see his father again for two years, until he and his mother landed at Heathrow one winter’s morning in 1999. There was snow on the ground and Fabrice spoke no English.
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But Muamba had an agile mind, real ambition and a gift for football which soon brought him to the attention of Arsenal. At the Arsenal academy, Muamba played with Jack Wilshere and Justin Hoyte, who both tweeted their sorrow and hope last night. “I seriously hope my best friend in football is OK,” said Hoyte, now at Middlesbrough. “Stay strong, bro, please stay strong.”
Though Muamba’s time at Arsenal came to a premature end when he was loaned to Birmingham City, his determination to make it in the top flight, first with Birmingham and, for the past four years, at the Reebok stadium, was fashioned in the adversity of his youth. Everybody who knew Muamba spoke of a strong, articulate young man who had excelled in his A-levels but wanted to play football in the league he had watched as a child.
Slowly but surely, he has become an essential part of Bolton’s squad, a popular character and an increasingly robust and combative midfielder, always willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the team. His skills caught the eyes of Stuart Pearce, who called him into the England Under-21 side. Muamba was thrilled to represent his adopted country.
“England is my adopted home, my adopted country,” he said recently. “The people here have helped me, have welcomed me with open arms so I am happy to give something back.”
Last year, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the land of his birth, came calling to see if he would play for them, but Muamba turned down the advances. He has never been back, nor has he spoken much of his arduous journey to freedom and fame. Of his uncle’s murder, he says: “It’s Africa, isn’t it? That’s the type of country it is.”
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More than two hours after the match was abandoned, journalists stayed at White Hart Lane waiting for news. The ground had long since emptied and the fate of the quarter-final of the FA Cup was a minor detail in a potentially tragic tableau.
“I felt sick watching it,” said Tom Huddlestone, the Tottenham midfielder, via his tweet. Everybody at White Hart Lane last night had the same feeling.