By Akinwale Kasali
After 39 years in coma, and on the verge of celebrating his 74th birthday, Senegalese born French footballer, Jean Pierre Adams, has died.
The former Nimes football Club and France defender died Monday, September 6th, 2021, after spending close to four decades in an Intensive Care Unit in France.
Adams made 22 international appearances in the 1970s, slipping into a coma after a mistake by his anaesthetist during routine knee surgery in 1982.
Born in Dakar in 1948, he was one of the first men born in West Africa to play for France.
His centre-back partnership with Marius Tresor for France was nicknamed “the black guard”.
“We learned this morning of the death of Jean-Pierre Adams,” Nimes wrote on Twitter, extending their “sincere condolences to his family”.
He also played for Nice and Paris Saint-Germain.
Adams was born and raised in Dakar until the age of 10, when he left his native Senegal on a pilgrimage to Montargis in the Loiret department alongside his grandmother, who was a devout Catholic. When they arrived, she enlisted him at a local Catholic school, Saint-Louis de Montargis. He was adopted by a French couple shortly after his arrival in the country.
During his studies, Adams worked at a local rubber manufacturer and he started playing football at several local clubs in the Loiret area.
Adams started playing with Entente BFN in 1967 as a striker, with whom he was runner-up in the Championnat de France Amateur twice.In 1970, he signed a contract with Nîmes, going on to remain in Division 1 for the following nine seasons, also representing Nice and Paris Saint-Germain.
In the 1971–72 campaign, Adams contributed four goals in all 38 games to help Nîmes to a best-ever second place, also winning the Cup of the Alps. He added a career-best nine for Nice in 1973–74, for a final fifth position.
After one year in Division 2 with Mulhouse, Adams retired in 1981 at the age of 33, following a spell with amateurs Chalon.
On 15 June 1972, Adams made his debut for the France national team in an unofficial exhibition game against an African XI selected by the Confederation of African Football. His first competitive cap came on 13 October of that year, in a 1–0 home win over the Soviet Union for the 1974 FIFA World Cup qualifiers.
Adams’ last appearance occurred on 1 September 1976, in a friendly with Denmark. During his tenure with Les Bleus, he formed a stopper partnership with Marius Trésor which was dubbed La garde noire (black guard).
Adams and his wife Bernadette were married in April 1969 and had two sons, Laurent (born 1969) and Frédéric (1976). Following a ligament rupture injury, he was hospitalised for surgery on 17 March 1982 at the Édouard Herriot Hospital in Lyon. After an error made by his anesthesiologist, he suffered a bronchospasm which starved his brain of oxygen and he slipped into a coma.
In the mid 1990s, when a court of law adjudicated on the case, both the anaesthetist and trainee were given one-month suspended sentences and fines that translated to a $815 fine. His wife continued to tend to his needs, refusing to consider euthanasia.
