Granted not the most pleasant of threads, but there was the terrible story yesterday of the 7 year old boy who collapsed during a game and later died.

Boy, 7, collapses and dies while playing football at school | Mail Online

RIP little man.

Theres no suggestion that it was anything to do with his heart but it reignited the subject at work today about footballers who are collapsing and in some cases dying.

Ive had a look back as far as Marc Vivien Foe (purely because thats the first collapse of this kind I can remember)

Since then there have been 30 deaths in football, 24 of them have been due to heart attack or cardiac arrest. Of the other 6 there were 3 due to collisions (head trauma) and 3 I couldnt find an answer on, based on the few of the 24 that I had to look up I would wager that the 3 outstanding were due to heart problems also.

My first thought when I looked at that was that it looks about right, after all, if a footballer dies what else is it going to be down to, a torn hamstring? They are either going to get booted in the head or its going to be heart related.

Its still shocking statistics though, especially when you consider that between 1889 - 1973 only 1 death that I can find was heart related.

So why are modern footballers collapsing and dying of heart related problems? They should be fitter and stronger than ever right? Whichever way you slice it this is a modern game phenomenon, I dont ever recall (before Foe) hearing of a footballer dying in action, if anything they should have been dropping like flies in the 70's - 90's when they were living it large.

Discuss.