Francis Koné is a Togolese International who boasts of no angelic touch or formal medical training but he does have the experience to save lives of fellow football players on the brink of death.
He once said “I am a Christian, I pray a lot, I fast a lot so I think God is trying to give me a message. Maybe I am a little angel sent by him. There are some people now who see me as an angel. I have a lot of messages like this. I say ‘I am just Francis Kone and it is God who is doing this, not me.”
So, it’s safe to say that Francis Koné is an angel who wears a football jersey, given his remarkable transformation from a target of racist abuse to a consistent lifesaver. It is just as staggering to acknowledge that he has prevented a team-mate or opponent from swallowing their tongue on four different occasions in his career that has spanned close to a decade.
Francis Kone The Lifesavers
Pat Conroy once opined that “Cameras are Lifesavers for a very shy people who have nowhere else to hide. Behind a lens, they can disguise the fact that they have nothing to say to strangers”
The first three times Francis Koné would save a life, (once in Thailand – 2011 and twice in Abidjan – 2013 and 2015) there were an absence of TV cameras or any publicity, but his latest life-saving incident in 2017 (there was TV camera this time) he couldn’t be robbed of his much-deserved acclaim and recognition any longer even if he was shy.
The incident occurred in a Czech top-flight clash between his Slovacko side and Bohemians 1905.
A game where Francis Koné’s performance on the pitch was characterized by racist abuse from a section of Bohemian fans in the opening 31 minutes of the game, marking Kone’s every touch with cries of ‘monkey’, but that didn’t deter him from doing what’s right when the Bohemian goalkeeper (Martin Berkovec) was about to swallow his tongue.
Koné spoke to The Guardian’s Dominic Fifield some days after the game, he said:
“I saw the defender was moving, so I was not worried about him, but the goalkeeper was still, lying on his back, and I could see the whites of his eyes. They were rolling in his head. He was either unconscious or worse. So I planted one foot across his chest to keep his left arm tightly in – sometimes the body can convulse, becomes really strong, and you can’t always control it – and tried to force my fingers into his mouth.“
“The jaw was locked tight, but I had to make sure he had not swallowed his tongue.
The clock was ticking, a couple of his team-mates came in and helped, moving him over on to his side, which you have to do to make sure the airways are clear, and I eventually prised his teeth apart and pulled the tongue back.
It was slippery with the saliva and at some point, he actually bit me, the jaws clamping back down, but it doesn’t matter. It was all over in a few seconds, and when the goalkeeper actually tried to say something I knew he was going to be fine. That’s when I got up and walked away.”
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Although, what Francis Koné has done may not strictly meet the medical guidelines guiding the soccer game, but as the popular clichè goes, desperate times deserve desperate measures – for Koné to have saved three other players using this same method, it means that the act has become something of a specialty for Koné.
Thereafter, the Bohemians medic, Martin Vavra, praised Koné’s swift intervention as well as Martin Dostal, one of the club defenders, slapped the Togo international on the back in appreciative thanks of his quick thinking.
Nonetheless, Francis Koné didn’t expect to receive a medal from the Bohemian Club that later sent an apology to him on behalf of its fans, not to talk of receiving something more dynamic and unique like the annual FIFA Fair Play Award.
In October 2017, during FIFA’s annual ‘THE BEST’ award ceremony in London, Koné’s name glittered brightly alongside the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo, Gianluigi Buffon, and Zinedine Zidane as he received the FIFA Fair Play Award in recognition of the heroic act.
Giving a reaction after receiving the award which he dedicated to his mother, Koné believes the football world can be great when there’s a dearth of racism. He said:
“It is a message. Fair play means something like this too – to stop racism, this is fair play,”.
“It’s not normal to treat a person as a monkey – it’s incorrect. Football is fair play and I showed them that. Football is not what they are doing with racism. They have to stop it – for me, that’s the message.”
It’s been quite a journey for Koné but unfortunately, three years after the incident, the racism plague is still very much around in the football world and the lovers, reporters, and administrators of the game can only hope that it becomes a thing of the past.
After starting out at FC Bibo in Ivory Coast (the same academy where his late friend Cheick Tiote came through), Koné played in Thailand, Oman, Portugal, and Hungary before moving to the Czech Republic.
He left Slovacko in 2017 and had a two-year stint with another Czech side, Zbrojovka Brno before joining Malaysian outfit, Kuala Lumpur this year.
