The 22-year-old Belgian defender Lars Dendoncker announced last week that he was retiring from football due to a heart condition, thus making him the second Brighton player to retire because of heart problems in less than a year.
Dendoncker, the younger brother of Leander Dendoncker of Aston Villa and the Belgian national team, announced his retirement on Instagram, saying “this was and will be the hardest decision ever in my life” and that it “really hurts”. He was signed by Brighton & Hove Albion on a two-year contract in 2020 and played for the Scottish side St Johnstone for a year on loan.
Although Dendoncker has only now made his retirement official, he in fact already stopped playing football over a year ago after being diagnosed with myocarditis. In an Instagram post from last December, he wrote:
I have been through tough times the past few months. Six months ago I was about to make a transfer to a new club. I did my medical and something wasn’t right with my heart condition. I suffered from myocarditis.
Six months earlier will have been in May, not long before the unfortunate Dendoncker’s contract with Brighton was set to expire.
Last October, the Brighton midfielder Enock Mwepu was also forced into retirement by a heart condition. At the time, the condition was described as congenital. But when Mwepu first started feeling unwell and was rushed to the hospital just two weeks earlier while on a trip to Mali, the problem did not sound congenital. Thus, in his own September 26th Instagram post, he noted cryptically that doctors, and presumably he himself, were not at liberty to disclose the details of “what really happened”.
Mwepu’s words are reminiscent of remarks made by the American basketball player Brandon Goodwin. In mid-2021, while playing for the Atlanta Hawks of the NBA, Goodwin fell ill after being vaccinated against COVID-19 and was subsequently diagnosed with blood clots.
Goodwin himself attributed his condition “1000%” to the vaccine. But in a Twitch video, he described how while in the hospital a team official told him “Don’t say anything about it, don’t tell anyone” – to which he responded, “Bruh, what?” (The video appears to have been removed from Goodwin’s Twitch account, but relevant excerpts are still available on the Daily Caller here.)
Brighton is not the only major football club to have had multiple players stricken by cardiac problems in the last two years. So too did German powerhouse Bayern Munich, though the Bayern players have since returned to action: French winger Kinsley Coman after undergoing heart surgery in September 2021 and Canadian defender Alphonso Davies after being diagnosed with myocarditis in January 2022.
Robert Kogon is the pen name of a widely-published journalist covering European affairs. Subscribe to his Substack and follow him on Twitter.
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I feel really sorry for anybody duped into taking this thing and then suffering from the ‘very rare’ side effects but it’s truly sick-making that the taxpayer will be the one paying the compensation.
Yes it’s putting the boot in ! Barstewards !!!
Capitalise the profits ….. socialise the costs (as usual) from the Not-a- Conservative-Government.
In contrast to disgruntled246 I have zero sympathy with those who took these obscenities in all their forms. Which part of “Brand new drug, Emergency Only” did they not understand? Hell, they didn’t even have to read all the details, as many of us did, they only had to listen to the basics. Stupidity is not an excuse for reducing your life span.
The thing that does pee me off is that I have to pay for their f###g stupidity!
Incidentally, all of my family and kids took these things. They thought my wife and I were mad. Hard to make up really. In answer to the obvious question: no, I have no sympathy for what is going to happen to my kids and family, they were told, they chose stupidity.
Sadly, most people I have spoke to about it still believe the vaccine was essential to staying alive.
I’ve found the same or they won’t discuss it at all. My sister has a rare form of cancer and took it. She was in her last month of remission; they found it had come back. Quelle surprise. She still maintains I’m wrong.
I see where you are coming from, I really do, but even people who are quite intelligent fell for it. People who are quite intelligent have fallen for a lot of crap in the past as well. I was probably saved by a high degree of contrarianism ie the more you tell me to do something, the less likely I am to do it.
Yup when I heard they might coerce people into taking the jab, that was enough for me to say I’m not taking that!
That was my point of no return too. Shortly prior to that, the bribes started – how people weren’t even slightly suspicious at that point…
Some people valued a free doughnut or hotdog was worth more than being cautious about the implications of being jabbed with a dubious concoction.
Yes, being a member of the Awkward Squad can serve you very well
Don’t forget the ITV Dr Hilary. When there was a mess leaflet campaign to make people aware of the Yellow Card adverse reactions, he screwed it up and threw it away on air, said ignore it!
Methinks a bit harsh on your kids and family. However, understandable.
Living in Thailand I wasn’t aware of the extent of the convid propaganda until I returned to the Uk in 2021 and I was horrified when I spoke to some friends who succumberd to it. Also those who believe in the climate crap.
I remember a poignant comment “why didn’t the Amish get covid? – Because they don’t have tv’s”. Sez it all really.
“exceedingly rare”. That sums up where the Daily Mail is today.
There is an awful lot of arse-covering going on in the MSM, making sure they say how ‘rare’ it is. Of course if you’re one of the poor sods that has been affected by it, then the failure rate is 100%.
I wonder if that’s why it stopped being available… after all, there was never any government announcement about it, but suddenly all the “Britain the winner in vaccine research” just stopped.
Kind of like asking your doctor for thalidomide back in the day and finding it’s got permanent supply problems.
What about it, HMG – do we ever get a health warning, or not?
From memory various Scandinavian doctors from the outset were on the look out for cases of myocarditis, so I think the defects of this product were known or at least suspected
Listened to and read a lot of personal stories regarding the AZ shot their stories are horrific. Listened to Adam Rowlands story today on the Doc Malik podcast (worth supporting) it’s heart breaking. Arise Dame Gilbert for your services to humanity.
Whilst this is very welcome, Never forget –
The modified RNA jabs are far more dangerous.
Don’t let AZ be thrown under the bus in order to divert attention from this essential fact.
And, in parts of the UK the NHS still advocates the jab for babies >6months old and for pregnant women.
Payouts for AZ will be miniscule compared to the butcher’s bill for the mRNA.
They have been still offering Boosters too.
There are 2 adverts for the clot shot in our local paper this week!
My mother in law had number 8 or 9 just a couple of weeks ago.
My son-in-law law who would have lost his job if not injected (required for travel) and also a good friend in my personal networks both experienced exactly the same heart damage after their second AZ dose. Both now on the same drugs for life as a consequence.
Two people close to me……. clearly exceedingly rare!
We were told it was safe – it’s now official that it isn’t. Is there risk?…..answer ‘yes’. Safe is an absolute term.
I would be nice to see a reprise of the Johnson, Vallance, Whitty Goon Show …… admitting that the jab they declared was “safe and effective” is anything but.
Funnily enough, they’ve all gone to ground.
‘Next slide please’. A montage of photos of the dead and life-changeingly injured.
“The complication – listed as a potential side effect of the jab – has previously been called vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT).”
It wasn’t listed as a potential side effect when the jabs were pushed onto people, since the rushed and inadequate “testing process” hadn’t identified it.
So NO-ONE gave Informed Consent.
ALL THE SCIENTISTS WHO KNEW & SAID SO, WERE CENSORED