Sevilla’s Puerta dead at age 22

As we reported yes­ter­day, Sevilla mid­fielder Anto­nio Puerta col­lapsed dur­ing a Primera Liga match on Sat­ur­day. Today brought the sad news that Puerta has died, just three days later. He had suf­fered a heart attack and had been on life sup­port since Sat­ur­day. What makes this even sad­der is that Puerta was going to become a father for the first time in about six weeks’ time.

Accord­ing to CNN, a spokesman for Vir­gen del Rocio hos­pi­tal stated that “We regret to report that the patient Anto­nio Puerta died at 1430 (1230 GMT) today. The death was caused by postanoxic encephalopa­thy and a mul­ti­ple fail­ure of his organs caused by the pro­longed car­diac arrest that pro­voked his admis­sion to hos­pi­tal.” The spokesman said that Puerta had also suf­fered irreg­u­lar pal­pi­ta­tions or arrhyth­mia in the right side of his heart.

Sevilla’s Cham­pi­ons League third qual­i­fy­ing round sec­ond leg against AEK Athens was post­poned but Friday’s Euro­pean Super Cup match against AC Milan could still go ahead. Uefa’s William Gail­lard was quoted as say­ing: “Friday’s game goes ahead at the moment but we will trans­form the game into a trib­ute to Anto­nio Puerta. Of course, we will respect the Sevilla play­ers if they feel they do not want to play, but we hope that this can be a ded­i­ca­tion to their for­mer team-mate.”

Puerta was a prod­uct of Sevilla’s acclaimed youth sys­tem, break­ing into the side in the 2004–5 sea­son before becom­ing a reg­u­lar the fol­low­ing year as a ver­sa­tile left sided player who could play as a wing back or midfielder.He became a hero to Sevilla fans for the spec­tac­u­lar goal he scored against Schalke 04 that secured their place in the UEFA Cup final for the first time in April 2006.

Puerta made his debut for Spain in Octo­ber last year, in a 2–0 loss to Swe­den in a Euro 2008 qual­i­fier. Although he only had one cap he was con­sid­ered one of the play­ers for the future for Spain and had caught the eye of a num­ber of Europe’s top clubs.