Jean-Pierre Adams (10 March 1948 – 6 September 2021) was a French professional footballer who played as a centre-back.
He was capped 22 times for France in the 1970s, and at club level, he played Division 1 football for Nîmes, Nice and Paris Saint-Germain. From March 1982 until his death in September 2021, he was in a coma as a result of mistakes made during a hospital operation.[3][4]
Early life
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 accompanied by his grandmother, a devout Catholic. When they arrived, she enrolled him at a local Catholic school, Saint-Louis de Montargis.[5] He was adopted by a French couple shortly after his arrival in the country.[6]
During his studies, Adams worked at a local rubber manufacturer and he started playing football at several local clubs in the Loiret area.[7][8]
In the 1971–72 campaign, Adams contributed four goals in all 38 games to help Nîmes to a best-ever second place,[10] also winning the Cup of the Alps.[11] He added a career-best nine for Nice in 1973–74, for a final fifth position.[10]
Adams' last of his 22 appearances[14] occurred on 1 September 1976, in a friendly with Denmark.[7] During his tenure with Les Bleus, he formed a stopper partnership with Marius Trésor which was dubbed La garde noire (black guard).[2][15]
Personal life, injury and death
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. Because many hospital staff were on strike during that time, errors were made by his anesthetist and a trainee, who later admitted to being "not up to the task"; as a result, Adams suffered a bronchospasm which starved his brain of oxygen and he slipped into a coma.[16][17][18][19]
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 were fined $815.[19] His wife continued to tend to his needs, refusing to consider euthanasia.[20]
Adams died on 6 September 2021 in Nîmes at the age of 73, after being in a coma for 39 years.[21][14] The following day, he was honoured with a minute's applause prior to the World Cup qualifier between France and Finland in Lyon.[22]
^"Jean-Pierre Adams nous a quittés" [Jean-Pierre Adams has left us] (in French). Paris Saint-Germain F.C. 6 September 2021. Retrieved 7 September 2021.
^Colombari, Bruno (18 May 2012). "1972, une année dans le siècle" [1972, a year in the century] (in French). Chroniques Bleues. Retrieved 18 March 2020.
