Jean-Pierre Adams, who played on several French teams in the 1970s and ’80s, died on Monday—after spending 39 years in a coma caused by an operation that went horribly awry. In 1982, Adams underwent knee surgery during a hospital strike and suffered cardiac arrest and brain damage during the procedure, People reports. Over the next four decades, he was cared for at home in France until his death at age 73. Paris Saint-Germain, where Adams spent two years, said in a statement that it had lost “one of its glorious former players.”
