Former Newcastle United star David Ginola has spoken openly for the first time about the heart attack he suffered last year, whilst playing a friendly match in his native France.
Ginola had to be revived through CPR and a defibrillator after collapsing in the south of France while playing football with friends last summer.
Speaking with TalkSPORT (via the Daily Star), the Frenchman has revealed how he ‘died for nine minutes’ and how he feels lucky to be alive.
“I was playing a football game with some of my mates in the south of France. We’d had a lovely lunch and we’d planned to play a very friendly game on a small pitch.” said Ginola, 50.
“In the second half of the game I fell on the floor and I was dead. I can’t remember it because it was just sudden.
“My mates told me that I suddenly fell on the floor and I was swallowing my tongue. So they called the ambulance people and they said: ‘Concentrate on the heart.’”
Frederic Mendy, formerly of Montpellier, had performed CPR on Ginola until an ambulance arrived.
“He pumped my chest for nine minutes. So I was dead for nine minutes.” Ginola added.
“I was waiting for the ambulance to arrive. The girl shocked me once, twice, three times. She looked at my friends and said: ‘Your friend is dead.’
“It wasn’t that they wanted to give up but she said that after three times most of the time it (the heart) doesn’t go back (restart).
“She tried another fourth and fifth time and on the fifth time they got a beat. My heart, they got a pulse. They took me to Monaco to the heart centre.
“All the nurses told me that they were just amazed by the force within me fighting to live.”
