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Norway manager Stale Solbakken died for seven minutes.
He was in training for Copenhagen when he suffered a shock heart attack and collapsed.
Then still a veteran midfielder aged 33, who had played for Norway at the 1998 World Cup and Euro 2000, he had only played 14 times for the club.
However, on March 13 2001, his heart stopped beating.
Distressed team-mates called team doctor Frank Odgaard and an ambulance arrived eight minutes later.
Odgaard later said: “He was clinically dead. It is a miracle that he is still alive. His heart had stopped beating.”
Stolbakken was put on a life-support machine in hospital and remained unconscious for 26 hours.
Club staff visited his home to tell wife Anniken the bad news.
It transpired the footballer had been born with a heart defect.
However, a pacemaker was fitted.
He was, understandably, forced to retire from playing – but, far more importantly, survived and recovered, stepping straight into coaching.
Solbakken, now 58 and Norway manager, said a few years after the incident: “Yes, it was a dramatic experience but it was really worse for my family than for me because I didn’t feel anything.
“It was simply as if the lights went out.
“My parents flew to Denmark straight away. I was told that on the plane my mum started planning my funeral.
“At first they worried whether I would survive, then whether my brain would be damaged.
“Those were the thoughts that tormented my family and team mates, who witnessed me collapsing, dying and being brought back to life.
“Something like that definitely changes some things.”
“I guess it is afterwards, when things have calmed down, that it has helped me differentiate between what is really important in life and what isn’t.”
Solbakken’s health scare came in between his two brief and unsuccessful stints in England.
The first came as a player, when he spent six underwhelming months at Wimbledon between October 1997 and March 1998.
Despite being bought for £250,000, scoring a goal and delivering two man-of-the-match performances, he made just six appearances.
Things simply did not click between the midfielder and manager Joe Kinnear and he was sold to Aalborg, where he became captain and won the Danish league title.
