Football was last night mourning the death of a third player in the space of 10 days after Chaswe Nsofwa, a former Zambia international, collapsed and died of heart failure during a training session with his Israeli club side, Hapoel Beersheba. The tragedy came less than 24 hours after Clive Clarke, the Leicester City player on loan from Sunderland, suffered a heart attack during Tuesday's League Cup tie at Nottingham Forest. Clarke was recovering in hospital yesterday.On Tuesday afternoon the Spanish side Sevilla said their left-back, Antonio Puerta, had died after suffering "five cardio-respiratory stoppages". Little more than a week earlier Walsall's 16-year-old youth-team player Anton Reid inexplicably collapsed on the training ground and died. It is unprecedented that the sport should lose three players in such a short period and it prompted a demand that compulsory heart screening be brought in for all professional players in Britain.
Andy Scott, whose 13-year career was ended by heart problems, called on the Football Association and Professional Footballers' Association to introduce mandatory cardiac testing for all players.
"There is clearly no reason why a young person should die when they are in the prime of their career," said Scott, Brentford's assistant manager. "It's complete ignorance that this has not been taken further. This is an ideal opportunity now to make it compulsory for all players to be screened. How many times is it going to have to happen? Everyone knows it's going on but it's getting someone at the top to get off their backsides." The FA described such a move as a "strategic decision for the whole game". No one at the PFA could be contacted last night.
Nsofwa, a 27-year-old striker, was training in temperatures approaching 40C when he collapsed. Rescue workers spent several minutes trying to restart his heart before paramedics arrived. Attempts to revive Nsofwa, including using an external pacemaker, proved unsuccessful and the player was pronounced dead when he arrived at Soroka hospital.
