Lightning killed a football player right during the match: the footage is not for the faint of heart

Foot­ball fans blame the ref­er­ee for the tragedy, who did not stop the game.

A soc­cer match end­ed in tragedy in Indone­sia after one of the play­ers was struck by light­ning. The inci­dent occurred dur­ing a friend­ly match between local clubs Ban­dung and Sub­ang.

The match took place at the first team’s home sta­di­um in West Java on Sat­ur­day 10 Feb­ru­ary. There was bad weath­er in Ban­dung that day — it was rain­ing heav­i­ly, but the game was not can­celled. About halfway through the match, light­ning struck the field and direct­ly hit the 34-year-old foot­ball play­er, whose name has not been released. He lost con­scious­ness, the oth­er play­ers helped car­ry him to the premis­es under the stands.

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A man was struck by light­ning. He lost con­scious­ness, and when he woke up, he received a sec­ond blow. What hap­pened to him?

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The man was rushed to a local hos­pi­tal, where doc­tors tried to revive him. How­ev­er, all attempts were unsuc­cess­ful, and he died with­out regain­ing con­scious­ness.

The tragedy was cap­tured on video made by eye­wit­ness­es — the video instant­ly went viral on social net­works. It shows the moment the light­ning strikes and how the play­er falls onto the grass. Due to the impact, his T‑shirt was torn to shreds.

Click and watch

Foot­ball fans from all over the world express their con­do­lences to the fam­i­ly of the deceased. Some online com­men­ta­tors point­ed out that the ref­er­ee should have stopped the game due to unfa­vor­able weath­er con­di­tions. “When I worked as a foot­ball ref­er­ee, I always kept an eye on the weath­er — I think it’s writ­ten down in the FIFA man­u­al.”wrote one of them.

By the way, this is not the only such case in Indone­sia in recent months. In 2023, a sim­i­lar inci­dent occurred dur­ing a youth team match in East Java: then a 13-year-old foot­ball play­er was struck by light­ning. The teenag­er suf­fered car­diac arrest and was urgent­ly tak­en to a hos­pi­tal in Bohone­goro. Then the doc­tors man­aged to save the player’s life: they car­ried out resus­ci­ta­tion mea­sures for 20 min­utes, and the ath­lete came to his sens­es.

In addi­tion, a sim­i­lar sto­ry hap­pened last Decem­ber in Brazil. Then a 21-year-old play­er of an ama­teur team became a vic­tim of a light­ning strike, and sev­er­al oth­er ath­letes who were on the field received injuries of vary­ing sever­i­ty. All of them were hos­pi­tal­ized in hos­pi­tals, where they remained under med­ical super­vi­sion for sev­er­al weeks.