Adams not forgotten after 25 years in coma

NICE, France, May 9 (Reuters) French soccer fans who were around in the 1970s will always remember Marius Tresor and Jean-Pierre Adams as the famous ''Black Guard'' at the heart of the national team's defence.

While Tresor is now a member of the staff of Ligue 1 side Girondins Bordeaux, Adams has been in a coma for 25 years after a knee operation that went wrong in 1982.

His two sons, Laurent and Frederic, symbolically kicked off a recent league match between Nice and Auxerre in a tribute to their father.

''Jean-Pierre Adams, one of us,'' read a giant banner held up that day by the Nice fans to make clear they would never forget a player who graced their club from 1973 to 1977, helping them to win the French title in 1976.

''This sort of gesture reminds us that the members of the football family have not forgotten our father and all he did for the clubs he played for,'' Laurent, who was 12 when the tragedy occurred, told Reuters.

Adams's wife, Bernadette, has been looking after her husband every day for a quarter of a century at the couple's home outside Nimes, where Laurent and Frederic grew up.

''This is a terrible drama and a painful memory for all those who love football,'' said Auxerre coach Jean Fernandez, who often met Adams on the pitches of France when both were professional players.

''He was a great player and a great person.'' ROLE MODEL Born in Dakar, Senegal, in 1948, Adams started his professional career at Nimes before joining Nice and Paris St Germain.

Unlike Tresor, who was a member of the great France side featuring Michel Platini that reached the semi-finals of the 1982 World Cup, Adams never had the chance to shine on the World Cup scene.

Like Tresor, however, Adams, who won 22 caps for France, encouraged many children who grew up in the 1970s to play at the back.

In 1982, Adams was 34 and playing for a third division side, Chalon, when he went to hospital in Lyon for an operation on a knee ligament. A problem with the anaesthetic resulted in a coma that has lasted ever since.

A court later concluded that negligence by hospital staff was partly responsible for the accident.

''Nobody has really tried to find out whether anything could be done to reverse things,'' Frederic, who was seven then, told Reuters.

BEDSIDE VIGIL Bernadette, Laurent said, was the one who deserved all the credit for staying by her husband's side through all those years.

''Mummy could tell you better than me what it's like to look after him every day,'' Laurent said.

''When we look after him, he moves, he coughs. He makes sure we don't sleep and stay at his bedside all night.

''We talk to him as if he could understand. We share everything with him, like birthdays or Christmas. We have introduced all his grandchildren to him as soon as they were born.'' Like his mother and brother, Frederic knows there have been cases of people waking up from a coma after years or even decades.

''Is there anything that can be done?, he asked. ''We don't know. All we know is we will never lose hope.'' Reuters BJR DS1255