RKC goalkeeper Etienne Vaessen was conscious when he was taken to a hospital on Saturday evening. This is what the general manager of the Waalwijk club, Frank van Mosselveld, says. Moments earlier, the goalkeeper was resuscitated on the field after a hard collision with Ajax player Brian Brobbey. According to Van Mosselveld, the goalkeeper was not suffering from heart failure.
“He was out on the field for quite a while,” Van Mosselveld told ESPN, after RKC’s canceled Eredivisie match with Ajax on Saturday evening. The score was then 2-3. Vaessen collided hard with Brobbey after 84 minutes of play. This immediately went completely wrong. The goalkeeper became unconscious and it initially looked bad.
Medics who rushed over bent over him and began performing CPR on the field. The goalkeeper was shielded from the public and cameras with cloths. His teammates and Ajax players formed a hedge around him to block the view. “But it was not about heart failure,” Van Mosselveld says now afterwards. “But that is the protocol. We all know what happened to Nouri. Since then, that protocol has been tightened.” (The young Ajax player Abdelhak Nouri suffered a cardiac arrest on the field in 2017 and suffered serious brain damage as a result, ed.)
“He doesn’t remember what happened at all. But at least he responded again.”
Ultimately, Vaessen was taken to the dressing room on a stretcher. “They did a check there. He was then taken to a hospital for scans.”
Vaessen is now approachable again, says the general manager. “Yes, he was approachable, but he no longer remembers what happened,” says Van Mosselveld. “But at least he responded again.”
The RKC match against Ajax was permanently stopped on Saturday evening some time after the collision. Players were extremely affected by what had happened on the field. They couldn’t complete the encounter. “They were extremely broken. You can imagine the impact something like that has,” says the general manager of RKC. “We decided together that finishing the match was not possible.”
READ ALSO: RKC goalkeeper Vaessen resuscitated on the field, match permanently stopped