Next Saturday, Brazil and Japan will kick off the 9th Confederations Cup in Brasilia. The tournament acts as a warm-up for next year’s World Cup in the same country, and plays host to the Champions of each continent, as well as the host nation, and World Champions. Various world footballing superpowers have a chance to lay a marker down before the greatest soccer show on earth rolls into town in twelve months time: the hosts are on the hunt for a record fourth Confederations Cup triumph, while this golden generation of Spanish talent looks to add to its already glistening trophy cabinet.
However, a dark shadow hangs over this year’s tournament: a shadow that stretches back ten years to the Stade de Gerland in Lyon. The 2013 edition of the Confederations Cup’s first semi-final will take place in Belo Horizonte on 26th June, exactly a decade after Cameroonian midfielder Marc-Vivien Foé tragically collapsed on the pitch playing against Colombia in the same competition, also in a semi-final.
The scenes in Lyon in 2003 are now all too familiar for English football fans after the events at White Hart Lane in March 2012, when Fabrice Muamba collapsed playing for Bolton Wanderers. Muamba’s story is now famous around the world: his heart stopped beating for 78 minutes, with many fearing that he would not survive. He was resuscitated at length on the pitch (including by a cardiologist attending the game as a fan), before being released from hospital one month later after a remarkable recovery.
The 28-year-old Marc-Vivien Foé was not so lucky. Like Muamba, Foé collapsed in innocuous circumstances in the centre circle and was treated on the pitch, although not at such length. After 45 minutes he died at the Stadium’s medical centre.
The Indomitable Lions won that match 1-0 and despite both teams’ calls for the final to be cancelled, France eventually triumphed over their West Africans by the same scoreline, thanks to Thierry Henry’s golden goal.
The presentation of the trophy and medals that followed was a triumph for the sport. Both sides appreciated that the events in Lyon were far more seismic than anything that the tournament itself could achieve. Marcel Desailly, captain of France, lifted the trophy in unison with his Cameroonian counterpart Rigobert Song; two Cameroonian players held a huge photo of Foé, adorned with a runners-up medal; earlier, Henry’s goal celebration had simply been to look towards the sky in acknowledgement to the tragedy. Later, Foé finished third in media voting for player of the tournament.
In the weeks that followed, tributes poured out from across the footballing world, not least at Foé’s former clubs, which included West Ham and Manchester City (to whom Foé had been loaned from Lyon the previous season). Foé has a road named after him in Lens (his first club), a plaque at Manchester City and his shirt number retired at City, Lens and Lyon. A stalwart of the national side, with 64 caps across 10 years, he was afforded a state funeral in Cameroon and decorated as a Commander of the National Order of Valour.
He was buried at a sports complex he had been building in Okoui, Yaounde, with speeches from Rigobert Song and Sepp Blatter. The day before the burial, 30,000 had turned out in the national stadium to pay their respects. Foé left behind a wife, and three children, the oldest of whom gave a speech at the opening of the 2009 Confederations Cup, aged 14.
The Premier League also saw tributes to Foé earlier this year when his two former clubs, Manchester City and West Ham, joined in a minutes applause in their meeting at the Etihad on the 27th April. City fans remember him particularly fondly as the last player to ever score at Maine Road.
So, as you check in to watch events unfold in Brazil, cast your mind back to the dark events of Lyon in 2003 and the tall, athletic midfielder and immensely affable and popular man who passed away that day.
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