Sept 7, 2021: The football world is mourning the death of Jean Pierre Adams, the former French international who spent 39 years in a coma.

Adams, who made 22 appearances for France, died on Monday at the age of 73, his former clubs, Paris St-Germain and Nîmes, said on Monday.

His tragic story in well known around the Football world, after he was left in a coma at the age of 34 after undergoing what should have been a routine knee operation in 1982. Adams never awoke from surgery, with anaesthetic-related errors by hospital staff in Lyon leading to his brain being starved of oxygen and causing him to slip into a coma and permanent brain damage.

According to media reports, the anesthesiologist made the mistake of leaving one of his trainees for Adams that day because he was responsible for eight other patients due to a strike by hospital staff.

A case was filed against those responsible after the late footballer went into a coma and both were indicted in the 1990s. The court sentenced both men responsible to one month in prison and fined them. The comatose footballer spent 15 months in hospital, after which his wife, Bernadette, took care of him. The late footballer has two sons. His widow said in an interview with a British broadcaster in 2016 that the hospital never bothered to apologize to him.

The Senegal-born footballer returned home to Nimes the year after the botched operation and was cared for by his wife Bernadette up to his death.

According to Bernadette, her husband was able to breathe, eat and cough on his own and didn’t need the aid of medical equipment.

A knee problem suffered on a coaching course led Adams to have the operation. Bernadette said in 2007: “Jean-Pierre feels, smells, hears, jumps when a dog barks. But he cannot see.”

Tributes have followed from his former clubs Nimes, Nice and PSG, as they all pay respects to a pioneer who paved the way for French-African footballers.

Adams made 84 appearances for Nimes,with the club expressing their “most sincere condolences to his loved ones and his family”.

Nice promised a tribute before their next home game against Monaco on September 19.

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