The halfback of Dnipropetrovsk's Dnipro team, Jaba Kankava, saved the life of his opponent from Kyiv’s Dynamo team during a game on March 30 in Dnipropetrovsk.
Dynamo’s
halfback and Ukraine’s football team’s key player Oleg Husev was injured when
Dnipro’s goalkeeper accidentally hit him in the head, jumping
to kick the ball.
When
30-year old Husev, Dynamo’s captain and a star player of Ukraine’s national team,
fell unconscious, facing the ground, it was Dnipro’s Kankava who reacted faster
than the medics.
Kankava
rushed to Husev, rolled him over and stopped him from choking on his tongue.
More players from both teams followed to help Husev.
The
stadium chanted Husev’s name to support him.
Husev
was hospitalized and diagnosed with a head injury, concussion
and jaw damage. Husev took a flight to Kyiv several hours after
the accident and left hospital on the afternoon of March 31.
“Dnipro’s
player saved Husev’s life. If the aid was provided later, the consequences
could be much worse. He acted like a professional doctor,” said Mykhaylo
Radutskiy, president of the Borys Clinic, where Husev was treated, in a comment to
Dynamo website.
Georgia’s
native Kankava said in a comment to www.champion.com.ua
website that he didn’t feel like a hero.
“I
had similar situations before, so I knew how to act,” he said.
The
video of Kankava’s impressive act went viral and was watched over 50,000 times
in less than a day.
Boyko
publicly apologized for the accident. Dnipro won the game 2-0.
Football
accidents can claim players’ lives. In 2001, 23-year old Sergey Perkhun,
a goalkeeper in Ukraine’s team, got fatal head trauma when he played for
Moscow’s CSKA team. He fell into coma and died in hospital 10 days later. In
2009, Romanian goalkeeper Alexander Yatan, 19, died after being hit in a chest
during the game.
The
game between Dnipro and Dynamo resulted in another popular video. Dnipro fans
performed “Warriors of the Light,” a new song by the Belarusian band Liapis Trubetskoy
that is associated with EuroMaidan protest.
